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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. % 
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



LOYE W MARRIAGE. 



%n ]§x8iaxxtKl Siuirj. 



LADY EACHAEL EUSSELL. 



By GUIZOT. 







TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 

MARGUERITE O. STEVENS. 



SJUto §0rh: 

PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PORTER, 

200 MULBERBY-STBEET. 

1864. 



7T- 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, 

By CARLTON & PORTER, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for 
the Southern District of New-York. 



iTEB LIBRARY 
JOF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



PREFACE. 



The translator of this brochure was in 
Paris about the time that it appeared 
from the press. It produced no little 
excitement among the Parisian reading 
public. The name of Guizot was, of 
course, a guarantee that it was worthy 
of attention; its title, however, presented 
greater attractions. "L' Amour Dans le 
Mariage" is a phrase of peculiarly doubt- 
ful significance to the fashionable and lit- 
erary society of the French metropolis, in 



4 Peeface. 

which the great author holds a pre-emi- 
nent place. Curiosity was awakened to 
ascertain what he could say on a subject 
deemed so ambiguous. Had he, like his 
distinguished cotemporaries, Cousin and 
Michelet, tired of the philosophy of His- 
tory, and undertaken to refresh his old 
age by the study of sentiment and ro- 
mance ? Thousands, attracted by the title 
of the little book, were doubtless dis- 
appointed; but all of elevated taste 
must have been favorably undeceived. 
The veteran writer had delineated, in 
his severest historic style, an example, 
in noble life, of the purest moral noble- 
ness, a romance of reality, full of human 
tenderness and religious beauty. He had 



Preface. 5 

no need of the aids of meretricious sen 
thnentality or embellishment. The cut- 
ting of the diamond must follow the 
cleavage of its own natural facets. 

On returning to America with her man- 
uscript, the translator noticed in the news^ 
papers the announcement of a version by 
one of our most celebrated female authors. 
The manuscript was therefore thrown 
aside; but the advertised translation 
failed to appear. It was probably found 
inconvenient to obtain in this country 
some of the English letters used in French 
by Guizot, and obviously a retranslation 
from the French into English would be 
inadmissible in documents requiring ver- 
bal exactness. The present translator 



6 Preface. 

has the advantage of possessing these 
letters. 

Guizot has not only presented in these 
pages a beautiful example of "Love in 
Marriage," but has illuminated one of 
the most interesting passages of British 
history. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. ROMANCE AND FACT 9 

II. LORD SOUTHAMPTON 12 

III. THE FAMILY OF RUVIGNY 24 

IV. YOUTH OF LADY RUSSELL 32 

Y. LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL 3Y 

VI. LOVE ^N MARRIAGE 44 

VII. TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF LORD RUSSELL 54 

VIII. LADY RUSSELL IN WIDOWHOOD 82 

IX. HER LATTER YEARS 114 

X. HER LAST DAYS 131 



LOYE II MARRIAGE. 



i 



The demand of the present day is for 
romances. But why do we not search 
history for them? There human life is 
found in its most varied and dramatic 
scenes; there the human heart is dis- 
played with its most vivid passions, with 
the sovereign charm of variety over all. 
I admire and enjoy imagination as much 
as any one ; that creative power which 
draws existences from nothing, animates 
them, colors them, and makes them live 
before us, revealiug the resources of the 



10 Love i^ Marriage. 

soul through all the vicissitudes of destiny. 
But characters who have really lived, who 
have truly experienced adverse fortunes 
and the passions, joys, and griefs which 
have such an influence over us, when I 
see these closely and intimately, they at- 
tract and retain my interest much more 
powerfully than the most perfect poem or 
romance. When the divine traits of that 
work of God, the living being, are shown 
to us, it is more beautiful to me than any 
human creation; for of all poets God is 
the greatest. 

In studying the history of England I 
have found two narratives more interest- 
ing, in my opinion, than any romance. 
The first is that of a king making a mar- 
riage of affection, and the other the de- 
voted attachment in domestic life of a 
great, liberal, and Christian nobleman. 
The privacy of the family is unvailed, 



Love in Marriage. 11 

revealing its sweetest and most charming 
secrets ; while the real actors are the lofti- 
est characters of the empire, and the scenes 
are amid the grandest events of public life. 
I may, perhaps, at some future time refer 
to the royal marriage ; but it is the house- 
hold of the nobleman I wish now to pre- 
sent to my readers. 



12 Love in Marriage. 

II. 



One of the most independent, and at 
the same time one of the most faithful 
of the counselors and defenders of Charles 
the First in his adversities, was Thomas 
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. He 
had naturally no taste for courtly life or 
power, or personal grandeur. The almost 
simultaneous death of his father and eldest 
brother suddenly put him in possession of 
the fortune and title of his family ; but he 
was more embarrassed than pleased with 
his newly-acquired honors, and for some 
time, it is said, he blushed and turned 
aside his head whenever he was addressed 
as "My Lord." He was naturally melan- 
choly, inactive, and proud, full of sensi- 



Love in Marriage. 13 

bility, but reserved and silent, though 
strongly attached to his own ideas and 
sentiments, and ready to sacrifice every- 
thing for them. Perhaps he was some- 
what proudly defiant to those who opposed 
them, but he was without ambition or de- 
sire for domination, seldom hopeful or 
sanguine of success, and never left his 
retirement except at the call of duty or 
necessity. When the debate between 
Charles I. and the Long Parliament com- 
menced, Lord Southampton took his place 
in the House of Lords with very unfavor- 
able feelings toward the pretensions of the 
crown and its ministers, and particularly 
toward Lord Stafford. As a good English- 
man he wished to respect the laws, national 
traditions, and the intervention of Parlia- 
ment in the affairs of his country. If he 
did not consider liberty of conscience an 
inalienable right, like a good and upright 



14 Love in Marriage. 

Christian he was displeased with any tyr- 
anny attempted in these matters, and he 
desired more tolerance and charity toward 
those who differed from him in opinion. 
In the early days of the Long Parliament 
he often voted against the bishops and the 
crown for the reform of abuses, or the 
punishment of violent despotism, both re- 
ligious and political. He seldom appeared 
at court, and began to be regarded by the 
king as a malcontent, like his friend the 
Earl of Essex. When, however, popular 
violence broke forth, when the disorders 
of the iniquitous Parliament could no lon- 
ger be concealed, when he saw the laws 
violated and the monarchy menaced by 
new despots, he suddenly returned and 
took his place, without eagerness or con- 
fidence, but with a proud conscientious- 
ness, among the defenders or rather serv- 
ants of the king. 



Love in Marriage. 15 

Though a stranger to all party combina- 
tions or systematic plans, and without any 
intention of reforming the constitution of 
his country in the future, he opposed in- 
justice, illegality, disorder, and violence in 
the present, not troubling himself about 
abstract principles, or the distant hopes 
which they might have held forth to 
others. The proceedings of Parliament 
against Lord Stafford appeared to him 
arbitrary, and his punishment undeserv- 
edly severe ; and he defended him, though 
he had at first attacked him. Both Houses 
had voted that it was inexpedient for any 
of their members to give themselves to the 
personal service of the Crown ; he accept- 
ed, though with regret, the office of privy 
counselor to the king, and afterward that 
of gentleman of the bed-chamber. When 
civil war broke out, though he detested 
the measure, and had no hopes of a happy 



16 Love in Marriage. 

settlement whichever party should be suc- 
cessful, he immediately took his place in 
the royal army, was at the battle of Edge- 
hill, and though he was every day more 
dissatisfied with the court, followed it to 
Oxford, maintaining in its midst all his 
independence and proud susceptibility. 
One day in the council he expressed him- 
self in severe terms against Prince Rupert 
and his arrogance toward the English no- 
bility. The prince, to whom the state- 
ments were reported with the usual 
amount of exaggeration, inquired of him 
if they were true. The earl acknowledged 
and maintained his opinion by an exact 
repetition of his words. Prince Rupert, 
deeply offended by his remarks, informed 
him that he should be ready to receive 
satisfaction from him in a sword en- 
counter on horseback. They met the 
next day. 



Love in Marriage. 17 

" "What weapons do you choose ?" asked 
the prince. 

"I have," said the earl, " no. horse here 
suitable for this service ;• I' do not know 
where to find one immediately ; besides, I 
am too small and too. feeble to measure 
myself thus with your highness. I beg 
you to excuse me, and allow me to use the 
weapons to which I am accustomed. I will 
light with pistols on foot." 

Prince Rupert unhesitatingly accepted. 
The seconds were chosen, and the rendez- 
vous was fixed for the next day; but the 
affair got abroad. The Lords of the Coun- 
cil interfered, closed the gates of the city, 
summoned witnesses, and succeeded in 
reconciling the earl with the prince, who 
treated him afterward with the greatest 
regard. 

When the war terminated, and the king 

fell into the power of Parliament, Lord 
2 



18 Love in Marriage. 

Southampton eagerly sought every oppor- 
tunity of approaching him, and every 
means of serving him. When all efforts 
had failed, when the trial, condemnation, 
and execution of Charles left nothing more 
to be hoped or attempted, he did not con- 
sider himself released from his duty to his 
king. The 18th of February, 1649, the 
day when the royal remains were to be 
buried in Windsor Castle, Lord South- 
ampton was present to accompany to the 
tomb the coffin of the prince whom he had 
neither been able to save nor enlighten. 
The snow fell in abundance, and in its 
short passage the black velvet pall that 
covered the bier was completely white 
with it, an emblem of the innocence which 
his faithful followers hoped to prove of 
him who was beneath it. 

After the abolition of royalty, while the 
Republic and Cromwell were in power, 



Love in Marriage. 19 

Lord Southampton lived retired in bis 
castle, at Tichfield, in Hampshire, as much 
a stranger to the plots of his party as to 
the new rulers of his country. Inflexibly 
faithful to the proscribed Charles II., he 
transmitted not only useful advice to him, 
but all the money he could raise on his 
fortune, though it had been much reduced 
by sequestration and taxes. But he took 
no more decisive part with the insurrection- 
ary attempts of the royalists, nor with the 
malcontent republicans, nor in intriguing 
alliances with foreigners. His good sense, 
his zealous patriotism, and his natural 
indolence, all conspired to retain him in 
this attitude of honorable inactivity. One 
day he learned that Cromwell, who had 
come into Hampshire on the occasion of 
the marriage of his son Eichard, had men- 
tioned his intention of surprising him with 
a visit. Lord Southampton immediately 



20 Love in Marriage. 

left his castle, and returned to it only 
when Cromwell had left the county. 

After the Restoration, notwithstanding 
his previous inactivity, Lord Southampton 
found himself in the first rank of the lords 
and former counselors of Charles I., whom 
the royalist opinions now called into 
power. He was also the intimate friend 
of Chancellor Hyde, who was on the most 
confidential terms with Charles II. He 
was Grand Treasurer at the same time 
that Hyde became Lord Chancellor and 
Earl of Clarendon. During seven years 
the two friends, one in principle, though 
very different in character, exerted them- 
selves to sustain at the same time the 
heartless and corrupt monarch, the dis- 
contented, though triumphant party, and 
the austere, humiliated, and irritated na- 
tion. Clarendon, who was ambitious, labo- 
rious, and passionate for his Church, his 



Love in Marriage. 21 

cause, .his power, and his rank, struggled 
strenuously against his former and later 
enemies, and against the decline of his 
favor with his royal pupil, who had be- 
come his king. Southampton, who was 
less active, preferring his ease and leisure, 
was also of a more liberal mind and heart ; 
tormented besides by disease, he dis- 
charged his duties conscientiously, and 
made vain efforts to maintain order and 
probity in the finances of the Crown ; was 
often sad, disgusted, sick, and frequently 
manifested, to Clarendon's great vexation, 
his desire of retiring from a situation 
which he occupied without pleasure and 
without success. 

In the last century France also pos- 
sessed two men of rare virtue and of 
somewhat similar character, Turgot and 
Malesherbes, who were associated together 
in the exercise of power. Turgot was full 



22 Love in Marriage. 

of ardor, faith, hope, and perseverance. 
Malesherbes was as sincere, but more fee- 
ble ; more easily discouraged, often saying, 
"Turgot does not wish me to resign; he 
does not see that we shall both be driven 
from our positions." They were, in fact, 
both dismissed by a king, good-hearted 
like themselves, who valued them, but 
who defended them no better than he 
defended himself. Charles II., who was 
as clear-sighted as he was corrupt, soon 
perceived Lord Southampton's reluctance 
for his position, resolved to take advant- 
age of it, and rid himself noiselessly from 
an inconveniently independent counselor; 
but Clarendon exerted all his remaining 
credit to continue his friend in office, as 
he had continued himself, and Lord South- 
ampton remained Grand Treasurer till his 
death, which happened a few months after. 
He bade adieu to his position and to life 



Love in Marriage. 2o 

without bowing, like the Lord Chancellor 
in the sadness of exile, under the unjust 
hatred of the people and the ingratitude 
of the king. 



Love in Marriage. 



III. 



Lord Southampton had married Rachael 
de Ruvigny, a French lady, a descendant 
of one of those noble families* who, in 
the sixteenth century, had embraced the 
cause of the Reformation, though feeble 
and persecuted from its cradle. Faith 
and conscience had induced them to take 
this course, for no personal interest and 
no temptation of riches or power had 
influenced them. At the time of the mar- 
riage of Lord Southampton with Rachael 
de Ruvigny the edict of Nantes was in 

* Their name was Massue, Beigneurs of Raynevel, in 
Picardy, Marquis de Ruvigny. Vide " Dictionnaire de la 
Noblesse de la Chesnaye des Bois," tome ix, p. 59-1; 
and "Xobilliare de Picardie." 



Love in Marriage. 25 

full vigor, and Richelieu, though persecut- 
ing aud destroying the Protestants as a 
political party, left their religious rights 
undisturbed, and even employed without 
hesitation in various public positions those 
among them whom he found devoted to 
the interest of the Crown and to himself. 
Mazarin followed the example of Richelieu ; 
he was as wise in the recognition of the 
religious liberty of the Protestants, but 
more timid in admitting them to the 
offices of State. Though free and tranquil 
within the limits of the edict, conquered 
Protestantism lost daily in France that 
real strength of action and of general 
opinion which are the only sure guarantee 
of liberty. Protestant churches were not 
closed, and the Protestants were not 
driven from their country; but they were 
repulsed in private life, and made to feel 
the isolation of foreigners. The brother 



26 Love in Marriage. 

of Lacly Southampton, the Marquis de 
Ruvigny, was one of the most able and 
important Protestants of that period. 
During the troubles of the Fronde, he 
gave to Anne of Austria and to Mazarin 
himself proofs of active, useful, and per- 
severing fidelity. "With the reduction of 
the Fronde, Mazarin, wishing to reward 
Ruvigny, chose him as Deputy-General 
of the National Synod of the Reformed 
Churches of France. The office comprised 
a double function, making him Charge 
(V Affaires from the king to the Protestants, 
and from the Protestants to the king. 
Ruvigny discharged this delicate mission 
with skillful zeal ; though often disliked, 
and even suspected by both parties, he 
remained equally faithful to the king and 
to his own Church, and was little dis- 
turbed by their alternate disj)leasure if 
he but succeeded in maintaining peace and 



Love in Maeeiage. 27 

right between them. The office, however, 
was not one which pleased him, and he 
had other hopes for his ambition. He 
wished to open a different career for him- 
self, either in the army or out of it ; but 
he was soon given to understand that no 
such opportunity as he desired could be 
expected without a change of religion. 
He was appointed to some services with 
the Protestants which he alone could 
manage, but beyond this the future was 
utterly closed to him. 

After the death of Mazarin and the 
restoration of the Stuarts, the numerous 
relatives of Ruvigny in England, his inti- 
mate connections with the Southampton, 
Russell, and other important families, both 
in the court and opposition, readily ob 
tained for him, without efforts on his part, 
that which he had formerly vainly desired. 
He was employed in various secret negoti- 



28 Love in Marriage. 

ations between the courts of Paris and 
London, now laboring to produce harmony 
between the two kings, and now to secure 
the influence of Louis XIV. over the most 
ardent leaders of the opposition in Parlia- 
ment. The French monarch had a sincere 
esteem for him, and Charles II. treated 
him with marked favor: "I have told 
Ruvigny all that is my heart. . . . France 
has never gone so far in its manifestation 
of good intentions as when he resided 
here," Charles wrote to his sister, the 
Duchess of Orleans. As a good French- 
man, a devoted royalist, and a sincere 
Protestant, Kuvigny made great efforts to 
serve his country, his king, and his religion 
at the same time, without any illusive 
hopes, however, of more than a brief suc- 
cess in this difficult attempt. The Edict 
of Nantes yet existed, but like a ruined 
and abandoned edifice, which only awaits 



Love in Marriage. 29 

one decided blow to lay it in ruins. Under 
the impulse of the general sentiment of 
catholic France, and at the pressing inter- 
cession of the clergy, Louis XIV., led on 
by that false and fatal idea that civil pow- 
er has a right over conscience, and that 
unity of state is identified with unity of 
faith, with a want of probity which he 
would not have been guilty of toward 
foreigners, broke, sometimes secretly and 
sometimes openly, the royal promises and 
legal guaranties which a part of his own 
subjects had received from his ancestors. 
The Marquis de Ruvigny, though a faith- 
ful servant of the king, could not blind 
himself to the final issue of this proceed- 
ing ; resolving when the last moment 
should come to sacrifice everything rather 
than his faith and the honor of his soul, 
he took care to secure for himself and his 
children letters of naturalization in En- 



30 Love in Marriage. 

gland, and in January, 1680, he wrote to 
his niece, Lady Kussell: "I send you our 
letters of naturalization, which will be safer 
in your hands than in mine. I beg you 
and also your sister (Lady Elizabeth Noel) 
to preserve them for me. They may be 
of service, for nothing is more uncer- 
tain than events." Events were not, how- 
ever, long uncertain. Five years afterward 
the Edict of Nantes was formally revoked. 
With great difficulty Ruvigny obtained, 
through the personal favor of Louis NIV. 
as a reward for his services, the privilege 
of exiling himself and his family from his 
country, instead of making a precipitate 
flight. Some years later, in IT 11, the 
king gave to the Abbe de Polignac the 
confiscation of the property of his son, 
Henry de Ruvigny, who had then become 
Lord Galway, in the service of \yilliam III. 
of England. 



Love in Marriage. 31 

Aside from its general consequences, the 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes cost 
France and the king three excellent and 
glorious servants: the Marshal de Schom- 
berg in the army, Admiral Duquesne in 
the navy, and the Marquis de Ruvigny in 
diplomacy. 



32 Love in Mauri age. 



IV. 

gmttjr of «£aim Bnssdl 



From the marriage of the Earl of South- 
ampton with Rachael de Ruvigny a daugh- 
ter was born in 1636, who bore like her 
mother the name of Rachael. The off- 
spring of this noble and conscientious pair 
was educated in the English and French 
traditions of virtue and piety; she re- 
ceived, besides, from the events in which 
her youth was passed, those strong mor- 
al impressions which never fail to ele- 
vate souls who are not crushed beneath 
their weight. She early learned to sym- 
pathize deeply with the misfortunes of 
others, and to endure domestic afflictions 
patiently. Her mother died during her 



Love in Marriage. 33 

infancy, and Lord Southampton married a 
second time, an occasion naturally of much 
domestic annoyance, even when it is not 
the source of real troubles ; but he pre- 
served the tenderest affection for the two 
daughters of his first wife, and Rachael 
fondly loved and respected her father. 
She saw him, without sanguine illusions or 
mental servility, devoted to that political 
party which, after due consideration, he 
believed the most just, remaining at the 
same time a royalist and a patriot. The 
actions and conversation of Lord South- 
ampton were marked by an enlightened 
but firm piety. In the life which his 
daughter led, nothing could trouble or 
destroy the salutary impressions which 
these examples had produced upon her 
character. At the time when she passed 
from childhood to youth she lived far from 
the world, in the country, in those habits 

3 



34 Love in Marriage. 

of tranquillity, dignity, and simplicity, so- 
cial elevation and popular benevolence, 
which are the best honor of a Christian 
aristocracy. In 1673, at seventeen years 
of age, she was beautiful, pious, and vi- 
vacious, without excess or want of imagin- 
ation, disposed to enjoy life peaceably, 
receiving benefits as mercies, and adversi- 
ties as lessons from the hand of God. At 
this time Lord Vaughan, eldest son of the 
Earl of Carbury, asked her hand in mar- 
riage, according to previous arrangements, 
which had been made by the relatives 
almost without her knowledge. Speaking 
afterward of this marriage to one of her 
friends, she said it was one of those unions 
which was rather accepted than chosen by 
either party. She went to reside with her 
father-in-law at Golden Grove, in Wales, 
and fulfilled all the duties of her new situ- 
ation without effort or pretension, inspir- 



Love m Marriage. 35 

ing the liveliest affection in all around her, 
but producing no other effect than those 
naturally resulting from her gentle virtues, 
her agreeable disposition, and her perfect 
and constant kindness, which was re- 
marked by every one. "There is no 
charm in the world comparable with 
kindness," wrote one of her husband's 
friends to her, "and you are the best 
proof of it. All who know you are com- 
pelled to honor you; and you owe them 
no gratitude for it, for they cannot do 
otherwise." Fourteen years thus flowed 
on in virtuous and modest happiness. In 
1665, the only child of this marriage was 
born, but it scarcely survived its birth. 
"We have no particulars of her husband's 
death, but in 1667 she was a widow, and 
resided with her beloved sister, Lady Eliz- 
abeth Noel, in the castle of their father, 
where their infancy had been spent. At 



36 Love in Marriage. 

Lord Southampton's death he left all his 
fortune to his two daughters. Tichfield 
became the inheritance of Lady Noel ; 
and the grounds and castle of Stratton, 
situated also in Hampshire, fell to Lady 
Vaughan. 



Love in Makriage. 37 



V. 



About the same time William Russell, 
the second son of the Earl of Bedford, a 
young man, three years younger than 
Lady Vaughan, made his debut in society 
and in public life. After three years of 
travel upon the continent he returned to 
England, a short period before the Res- 
toration, and was elected a member of 
the House of Commons which placed 
Charles II. upon the throne. Scarcely 
any traces remain of his life and character 
at that time. A note from him to Mr. 
Thornton indicates a sincerely pious dis- 
position. " I am recovered," he wrote, 
"of an unruly sickness which brought 



38 Love in Marriage. 

me so low that I was just at death's 
door: my prayers to God are to give me, 
together with my health, grace to employ 
it in his service, and to make good use of 
this visitation by the serious application 
of it." The manners of the time, how- 
ever, the example of the Court, and the 
impetuosity of youth, sometimes betrayed 
him into irregularities of life. He was 
engaged in several duels, excited probably 
by trivial causes ; but at the moment of 
this always solemn act, however frivolous 
the occasion, serious sentiments reappeared 
in the soul of young William Russell, 
which was impressed with an affectionate 
simplicity and touching kindness. The 
second of July, 1663, he wrote to his 
father, the Earl of Bedford: 

" My Lord : Although I think I have 
courage enough to light with anybody 



Love in Marriage. 39 

without despairing of the victory, yet 
nevertheless knowing that the issue of 
combats depends upon fortune, and that 
it is not always he that has most courage 
and the justest cause who overcomes, but 
he that is luckiest ; and having found my- 
self very unlucky in several things, I have 
thought fit to leave these few lines be- 
hind me to express (in case I should mis- 
carry) some kind of acknowledgment for 
the goodness your lordship has had in 
showing me so much kindness above what 
I have deserved. I have the deepest 
sense of it in the world, and shall always 
(during life) make it my business to ex- 
press it by my life and actions. For 
really, my lord, I think myself the hap- 
piest man in the world in a father, and 
I hope (if I have not already) I should, 
at least for the future, have carried myself 
so as not to- make your lordship think 



40 Love in Marriage. 

yourself unhappy in a son. My lord, in 
case I miscarry, (for without it I suppose 
this will not come to your hands,) let me 
beg of you to remember me in the per- 
sons of those who have served me well. 
Pray, let not my friend Taaffe suffer for 
his generous readiness to serve me, not 
only on this occasion, but in several others 
wherein he has showed himself a very 
generous and kind friend to me; there- 
fore, pray bring him off clear, and let 
him not suffer for my sake. For my men, 
I doubt not your lordship will reward 
them well. For Eobin, my footman, be- 
cause he has served me faithfully, care- 
fully, and with great affection, I desire 
that twenty pounds a year may be settled 
on him during his life; and the French- 
man I hope you will reward very well, 
having served with care and affection. 
For my debts, I hope your lordship will 



Love in Maeriage. 41 

see them paid, and therefore I shall set 
them down to prevent mistakes. I owe 
one hundred pounds, forty pounds, and, 
I think, some four or five more to my 
Lord Brook. This is all I owe which I 
can call to mind at present, except for 
the clothes and some other things I have 
had this winter, of which my man can 
give an account. I have not time to write 
any longer, therefore I shall conclude with 
assuring your lordship that I am, as much 
as it is possible for me to be, my lord, 
your lordship's most dutiful son and hum- 
ble servant, "William Russell." 

With such a respectful, tender soul 
life could not always be disorderly. It 
was not long before his conduct rose 
to the level of his moral nature. Lady 
Vaughan was probably not a stranger to 
the re-establishment of moral harmony in 



42 Loye in Marriage. 

the noble young man to whom she soon 
gave herself. Of all human influences 
that of virtuous love is the sweetest, as it 
is the most powerful. No details remain 
of their first acquaintance ; it is only 
known, by a letter from Lady Percy, the 
half sister of Lady Vaughau, that in 1667 
William Russell was charmed with the 
beautiful widow. " He manifests," she 
writes, "like many others, an ardent de- 
sire to gain the heart, which is such a 
desirable conquest to all." Lady Vaughan 
was a rich heiress, without children from 
her first marriage. William llussell, who 
was a younger son, had neither title nor 
fortune to offer her. He was undoubtedly 
on this account more timid and reserved ; 
but there was too much innate and inti- 
mate sympathy between them to allow 
worldly considerations long to separate 
them. The marriage took place in the 



Love in Marriage. 43 

beginning of the year 1670, but, accord- 
ing to the usage of English society, the 
bride retained her title of Lady Vaughan 
till 1678, when, by the death of his elder 
brother, William Kussell became the heir 
of his house, and took the title of Lord 
Russell. We have good reason to sup- 
pose that if Lady Vaughan had lived in 
our time, she would not have waited so 
long before adopting the name of the man 
she loved. Personal feelings have con- 
quered aristocratic taste in this respect; 
and more recently Lady Cowper did not 
hesitate, in her marriage with Lord Pal- 
merston, to renounce her own title for the 
name and inferior title of her husband. 



44 Love m Mahkiage. 



VI. 



Tins world has nothing to offer more 
charming than the example of a pure and 
happy affection. That full and sincere out- 
burst of the interior strength and desires 
of the soul, which we call Love, has such a 
charm for us that we contemplate it with 
the profounclest interest, even when we find 
it mingled with culpable errors, troubles, 
discontent, and grief; but when it is seen 
in harmony with conscience, filling the 
soul with joy, leaving its beauty and peace 
unchanged, it is the richest treasure of our 
nature ; it is the most human, and at the 
same time the most divine, gratification of 
our aspirations; it is Paradise regained. 



Love in Marriage. 45 

The union of Rachael Wriothesley and 
William Russell presented this rare and 
beautiful character. Hitherto Rachael has 
appeared tranquil, simple, unpretending, 
and virtuous, pursuing modestly the strict 
but ordinary routine of life. But now 
passionate love and supreme happiness 
have taken unsought possession of that 
heart so well constituted to enjoy them ; 
she gives herself up to her new felicity 
with full liberty and confidence ; she loves 
as ardently as innocently, and she is per- 
fectly happy. " If I were more fortunate 
in my expression, 1 ' she writes to her hus- 
band, " I could do myself more right when 
I would own to my dearest Mr. Russell 
what real and perfect happiness I enjoy 
from that kindness he allows me every day 
to receive new marks of, such as, in spite 
of the knowledge I have of my own wants, 
will not suffer me to mistrust I want his 



46 Love in Marriage. 

love, though I do to merit so desirable a 

blessing ; but my best life, you that know 
so well how to love and to oblige, make 
my felicity entire, by believing my heart 
possessed with all the gratitude, honor, 
and passionate affection to your person 
any creature is capable, of, or can be 
obliged to." And elsewhere, eight years 
after : " My dearest heart, flesh and blood 
cannot have a truer and greater sense of 
their own happiness than your poor but 
honest wife has. I am glad you find 
Stratton so sweet; may you live to do so 
one fifty years more ; and if God pleases I 
shall be glad I may keep your company 
most of those years, unless you wish other 
at any time ; then I think I could will- 
ingly leave all in the world, knowing you 
would take care of our brats; they are 
both well, and your great one's letter she 
hopes came to you." 



Love in Marriage. 47 

And yet again, a year later : " To see 
anybody preparing and taking their leave 
to see what I long to do a thousand times 
more than they, makes me not endure to 
suffer their going, without saying some- 
thing to my best life, though it is a kind 
of anticipating my joy when we shall meet, 
to allow myself so much before the time. 
... I would fain be telling my heart 
more things — anything to be in a kind 
of talk with him, but I believe Spencer 
stays for my dispatch. He was willing to 
go early; but this was to be the delight 
of the morning and the support of the 
day. 'Tis written in bed, thy pillow at 
my back, where thy dear head shall lie, 
I hope, to-morrow' night, and many more, 
I trust in His mercy, notwithstanding all 
our enemies or ill-wishers. Love, and be 
willing to be loved by," etc. 

Lady Kussell did not limit herself to 



48 Love in Marriage, 

expressions of love to her husband; she 
manifested it actively in smaller as well 
as in more important things, in her asso- 
ciations with his relatives, in conforming 
to all his tastes, living with him in society 
when he wished it, and in the country 
when he preferred that, and in taking care 
of his amusement as well as his happiness. 
When they were separated, one at London 
and the other at Stratton, as seldom hap- 
pened, however, she collected all the news, 
political as well as social, all that related 
to the affairs of their friends, or the inci- 
dents of society ; communicating everything 
to him promptly and simply, without any 
attempt at displaying her abilities, but 
only her desire to interest or divert him 
by all the means in her power. "I am 
very sure my dearest Mr. Russell meant 
to oblige me extremely when he enjoined 
me to scribble to him by the post, as 



Love in Marriage. 49 

knowing he could not do a kinder thing 
than to let me see he designed not to 
think me impertinent in it; though we 
parted but this morning, which I might 
reasonably have doubted to have been, 
when I have passed all this long day and 
learned nothing new can entertain you and 
your good company. All I see either are, 
or appear, duller than when you are here ; 
and I do not find the town is enlivened by 
the victory we have obtained* There is 
no more talked of than you heard last 
night, nor anything printed, because no 
letters have come yet. Lord Howard's 
son is expected every hour with them. 
Many whisper the French behaved them- 
selves not like firm friends. The Duke of 
York's marriage is broken off That or 

* The naval battle of Tolbay, of the 26th of May, 1672, 
in which the Duke of York, sustained by a French squad- 
ron, gained a dear-bought advantage over the Dutch fleet 

commanded by De Ruyter. 

4 



50 Love in Marriage. 

other cause makes hini look less in good 
humor • than ordinary. They say she is 
offered the king of Spain, and our prince 
shall have D'Elbceuf," etc. 

Besides, and shall I say above, this love 
so deep and tender, there was, I will not 
say another love, because I do not like the 
use of similar terms to express emotions so 
widely different; there was, however, an- 
other sentiment which filled the soul of 
Lady Russell, strengthening her during 
her days of happiness for the day of trial. 
She was a Christian, a true Christian in 
mind and in heart, full of faith in Chris- 
tian doctrines and submission to Christian 
precepts. She had no sectarian spirit, no 
taste for religious disputation, and toward 
those who differed from her she showed 
an elevated and intelligent charity. We 
shall see when God proved her, with what 
rare prudence and beautiful harmony her 



Love in Marriage. 51 

Christian sentiments and her earthly affec- 
tions, her love and her piety, were recon- 
ciled. The reader will not fail to remark 
the power of faith in her soul, preparing 
her with a strong but humble trust, while 
she was perfectly contented and happy 
with her earthly lot, to accept from the 
hand of God the blows, or rather the 
blow, of which she sometimes seemed to 
have a presentiment. In one of those let- 
ters to her husband, in which she pours 
out her love in passionate expressions of 
gratitude and tenderness, she stops herself 
suddenly and says to him: "What have I 
to ask but a continuance (if God see fit) 
of these present enjoyments ; if not, a sub- 
mission without a murmur to his most 
wise dispensations and unerring provi- 
dence, having a thankful heart for the 
years I have been so perfectly contented 
in. He knows best when we have had 



52 Love in Marriage. 

enough here : what I most earnestly beg 
from his mercy is, that we both live so as 
whichever goes first, the other may not 
sorrow as for one they have no hope. 
Then let ns cheerfully expect to be to- 
gether to a good old age; if not, let us 
not doubt but he will support his servants 
under what trials he will inflict upon 
them. These are necessary meditations 
sometimes, that we may not be surprised 
above our strength by a sudden accident, 
being unprepared. Excuse me if I dwell 
too long upon it. It is firmly my opinion 
that if we can be prepared for all condi- 
tions, we can with the greater tranquillity 
enjoy the present, which I hope will be 
long, though when we change it will be 
for the better I trust, through the merit 
of Christ. Let us daily pray it may be 
so, and then admit of no fears. Death is 
the extremest evil against nature, it is 



Love in Marriage. 53 

true. Let us overcome the immoderate 
fear of it, either to our friend or self, and 
then what light hearts may we live with." 
Ten years passed away from the clay 
when Lady Russell addressed these pious 
words from London to her husband, then 
at Stratton. Lord Russell was now in his 
turn at London, and his wife wrote him 
from Stratton, the 25th of September, 
1682: "I know nothing new since you 
w^ent; but I know as certainly as I live 
that I have been for twelve years as pas- 
sionate a lover as ever woman was, and 
hope to be so one twelve years more ; 
happy still and entirely yours." 



54 Love in Marriage. 



VII. 
Crhl mxir femibn oi Ifortr |lussell 



Scarcely ten months after this letter, 
filled with so much love, confidence, and 
happiness, the storm darkened this pure 
sky; Lord Russell was a prisoner in the 
Tower of London, summoned to appear at 
the Assizes of the Old Bailey to answer to 
the charge of high treason. For several 
years he had kept his seat in the House 
of Commons, though he seldom took part, 
and perhaps felt little interest in the de- 
hates. He was young, and absorbed in 
the ardent pursuits of youth. England 
gradually exhausted the joys and hopes 
to which it gave itself at the Restoration. 
Remembrances of the revolutionary time, 



Love in Maeeiage. 55 

and the reaction against its maxims, its 
acts and its actors, had filled all minds. 
Charles II. and his Court had fostered 
this reaction with licentious egotism : en- 
couraging it by their excesses, they at 
last exhausted it. Their pretensions, their 
faults, their vices, excited new questions 
and new passions. The old royalists, 
the men who had served Charles I. and 
combated Cromwell, disappeared. New 
men, and new parties under their protec- 
tion, entered upon the stage ; the party of 
the Crown and the party of the country 
became the Tories and the Whigs; suc- 
cessors, but thoroughly transformed suc- 
cessors, of the "Cavaliers and Roundheads." 
Parliament had become the arena and 
essential instrument of j)olitics ; the royalist 
Long-Parliament pursued, though execrat- 
ing it, the work that the revolutionary 
Long-Parliament had undertaken, The 



56 Love in Marriage. 

risen monarchy prevailed by the same 
arms which had caused its overthrow ; the 
king governed the country by Parliament, 
and Parliament by its own leaders, w r ho 
had become the counselors of the Crown. 

By a coincidence, which cannot be re- 
marked without interest, it was very 
nearly at the same time in which Lord 
Russell married Lady Vaughan that he 
first engaged actively in the party of the 
country against the Court. Domestic hap- 
piness and patriotic passion commenced 
simultaneously with him. Of a benevo- 
lent and generous heart, and of an elevated 
mind, though with little breadth or pene- 
tration, however, and w r ith a character 
more obstinate than strong, he was easily 
influenced, governed, or deceived when his 
inclinations led him. Pie soon became 
one of the most zealous opponents of the 
Court, and the moral ornament as well as 



Love in Maeeiage. 57 

the political leader of his party. Always 
ready to sacrifice himself, for eleven years 
in the House of Commons he took the 
defense, and often the initiative of the most 
extreme measures of the opposition, among 
others of the bill proposed to exclude the 
Duke of York, as a Papist, from the suc- 
cession to the Crown. With his party 
and with the nation, besides the merit of 
his devotion to them, he possessed the 
additional attraction of almost always 
sharing their prejudices, passions, and 
blindness. Superior to them all by his vir- 
tues, but resembling them in his opinions 
and sentiments, he became almost im- 
mediately the most popular and honored 
man in the kingdom; and such was the 
harmony and sympathy between him and 
the national party, that there was no 
means of showing him his own errors or 
those of his old friends, for warnings came 



58 Love in Marriage. 

from his enemies only, and they were 
never believed. 

Lady Russell alone, notwithstanding her 
love and her modesty, had some doubts of 
the propriety and some anxiety respect- 
ing the position of her husband, and she 
expressed them to him with a frankness 
as firm as it was tender. In politics, as 
in religion, she shared the belief, the sen- 
timents, and the wishes of Lord Russell; 
she had, like him, a lofty and patriotic 
heart, deeply interested in the fate of her 
country; but her mind was more correct 
and comprehensive, less prejudiced, and 
more penetrating. In March, 1687, when 
Lord Russell was preparing to sustain a 
violent opposition motion, he received 
from his wife, while the House was sitting, 
this note : 

" My sister being here, tells me she 
overheard you tell her lord last night 



Love in Mareiage. 59 

that you would take notice of the business 
(you know what I mean) in the House. 
This alarms me, and I do earnestly beg 
of you to tell me truly if you have or 
mean to do it. If you do, I am most 
assured you will repent it. I beg once 
more to know the truth. 'Tis more pain 
to be in doubt, and to your sister too, and 
if I have any interest, I use it to beg your 
silence in this case, at least to-day." 

It is unnecessary to reread this letter to 
be convinced that it was not the first time 
Lady Russell had thus remonstrated with 
her husband. Her earnestness in conjur- 
ing him to tell her the truth contains a 
gentle reproach that he had often con- 
cealed it, and her deep solicitude about 
what she scarcely dared hope to prevent. 
Lord Russell was evidently deeply im- 
pressed with this entreaty from his wife, 
for he carefully preserved it, writing with 



60 Love in Marriage. 

his own hand the date and the place 
where he had received it. I am inclined 
to think, however, that he did not follow 
her advice on this day, nor probably at 
any other time. 

The time at last arrived when the king, 
though little inclined to political risks, and 
the Parliament, though monarchical and 
loyal, could no longer exist together. The 
national party demanded of Charles II., 
in the disinheritance of his brother, the 
destruction of the monarchy with his own 
hands. The king asked the national party 
to submit at any risk to a prince who evi- 
dently desired the destruction of the re- 
ligion and constitution of the country. 
Thus driven to extremity, the king decided 
to attempt tyranny, and the national party 
insurrection. At the moment of the crisis, 
in 1681, when the last Parliament of 
Charles II. was dissolved, two men, Lord 



Love in Maeriage. 61 

Shaftesbury and Lord Russell, were at the 
head of the cabinet. Shaftesbury was 
already old, and as ambitious and inde- 
fatigable as he was corrupt ; he had been 
perverted by all the influences of corrup- 
tion, by the Court, power, and popularity. 
He had exercised himself from his youth in 
seeking success by plots and intrigues ; of an 
audacious, and yet pliant character; saga- 
cious and fertile in expedients, he was 
equally skillful in serving or injuring, in 
pleasing or embroiling. He was attached 
both by pride and prudence to the Prot- 
estant and national party, which appeared 
to him the strongest, and he was fully 
determined to save his life in any case — to 
gather the fruit of his intrigues or to re- 
commence them. Lord Russell was still 
young, sincere, ardent, and inexperienced; 
of an upright mind, a heart full of faith 
and honor, conscientious in all his under- 



62 Love in Marriage. 

takings, and ready to sacrifice his life for 
his cause, but incapable of doing anything 
merely for success. Between these two 
men, engaged in the same enterprise, but 
with such different motives, it was easy to 
foresee which would appear the instru- 
ment in case of success, and which the 
victim if reverses came. 

The conspirators, though generally 
united, were not all of the same opinions, 
and on account of mutual distrusts their 
designs were not always known to each 
other. Lord Eussell projected armed re- 
sistance to the royal tyranny, and perhaps 
comprehended the consequences of such a 
resolution. Lord Shaftesbury clearly saw 
his design, and, resolved that the king 
must be overthrown at any price, made 
arrangements for another successor than 
the legitimate heir. A sudden attack and 
the assassination of Charles II. was some- 



Love in Marriage. G3 

times proposed ; but while some of the 
Republicans indulged these dreams, others 
among them were traitors, already bought 
by the Court, or willing to reveal their 
secrets and their accomplices to save them- 
selves from peril. At one of their meet- 
ings Lord Russell saw Lord Howard, a 
man whom he despised, enter with Col- 
onel Sidney and Mr. Hampden. 

" What have we to do with this rogue ?" 
said he to Lord Essex, his intimate friend, 
as he rose to withdraw; but Lord Essex, 
who had a better opinion of Lord How- 
ard, detained him, little suspecting that 
this man's testimony would ruin them 
both. 

Some days later Lord Mordant, an ar- 
dent Royalist, who, though he was very 
far from being a conspirator himself, was 
well-disposed to Lord Shaftesbury, had 
an interview with the king's mistress, the 



64 Love in Marriage. 

Duchess of Portsmouth, with whom, for 
his own advancement, he had formed a 
secret, but very familiar intimacy. It was 
suddenly announced to them that the king 
had arrived and had ascended the stair- 
case. The duchess hastily concealed Lord 
Mordant in an adjoining closet. Curious, 
and perhaps a little jealous, he looked 
through the key-hole and soon saw Lord 
Howard enter ; but he conversed with the 
king in so low a tone that nothing could 
be distinctly heard. As soon as the visit- 
ors of the duchess had departed, the 
prisoner was set at liberty. He imme- 
diately took a hackney-coach and drove 
in haste to Lord Shaftesbury, whom he 
informed of what he had seen. 

"Are you perfectly certain of this?" 
asked the earl as he looked steadily at 
him. 

" Perfectly certain," replied Mordant. 



Love in Marriage. 65 

" Well, my lord, you are a young man 
of honor, and cannot wish to deceive ine; 
if this is true, I must depart this evening," 

That same night Lord Shaftesbury left 
his house, and concealed himself beyond 
London, where the order was given the 
next day for his arrest. Some days after 
he embarked at Harwich and fled to Hol- 
land, hoping to find with the Prince of 
Orange an asylum and an avenger. As 
Lord Chancellor he had encouraged the 
war with Holland, often repeating, "Car- 
thage must be destroyed." On his arrival 
in Amsterdam he was obliged to ask per- 
mission of the burgomaster to reside there. 
The magistrate replied: "Carthage, not 
yet destroyed, willingly receives the Earl 
of Shaftesbury within its walls." 

At the same time that the order had 
been given for Lord Shaftesbury's arrest, 
a writ was issued for Lord Russell's ap- 

5 



66 Love in MaPwRiage. 

pearanee before the council. The messen- 
ger who bore the order stationed himself 
before the principal entrance to the house, 
but the back doors remained unguarded, 
perhaps designedly. Lord Russell might 
have escaped ; but he refused, saying his 
flight would be an acknowledgment, and 
that he had done nothing which should 
make him fear the justice of his country. 
He sent Lady Russell in haste, however, 
to consult his principal friends, who were 
all of opinion, from the instructions he had 
sent them, that it would be better for him 
to remain. At his appearance before the 
king and council Charles said to him : 
"We do not suspect you of any design 
against my person, but I have strong 
proofs of your plots against my govern- 
ment." After a long examination, Lord 
Russell was sent to the Tower. As he 
entered he told Taunton, his servant, that 



Love in Marriage. 67 

those who had sworn against him would 
have his life. Taunton expressed the 
hope that his enemies would not succeed. 
"They will have it," said Lord Russell; 
u the devil is let loose." 

I do not intend to detail here this great 
and celebrated trial. I only wish to re- 
trace the private life of Lord and Lady 
Russell, their personal relations and mu- 
tual sentiments in their time of trial, as 
well as in their happier hours. From the 
moment of her husband's arrest, Lady 
Russell consecrated herself, with an ardor 
as intelligent as it was firm and passion- 
ate, to every measure which might be of 

• 

service to him. During the fifteen days 
which passed between his arrest and the 
sentence, she went, and came, and wrote 
incessantly, collecting instructions, sustain- 
ing the courage of alarmed friends, excit- 
ing the interest of the indifferent, and 



68 Love in Marriage. 

seeking all possible means of assistance 
while his fate was remaining uncertain, 
and any chance remained for his salvation 
from the extreme penalty. She was so 
actively and absolutely identified with 
Lord Russell in the general opinion, that 
when he complained that the list of jurors 
had not been communicated to him, the 
lord chief justice and the attorney general 
justified themselves by proving that Lady 
Russell had been informed respecting 
them. The evening before the day when 
he was to appear before the Court of As- 
sizes she wrote to him : " Your friends, be- 
lieving I can do you some service at your 
trial, I am extremely willing to try if my 
resolution will hold out; pray let yours. 
But it may be the court will not let me ; 
however, do you let me try." On the 13th 
of July, 1683, the debate opened; the hall 
was crowded with spectators. " We have 



Love in Marriage. 69 

no place to sit," said the officers. Lord 
Eussell asked for pen, ink, and paper to 
take notes ; they were given him. 

"May I have somebody write, to help 
my memory V 

" Yes, my lord, any of your servants." 
" My wife is here, my lord, to do it." 
Lady Eussell rose to express her assent, 
and a thrill of emotion ran through the 
entire assembly. 

"If my lady please to give herself the 
trouble," said the chief justice ; and during 
the entire debate Lady Russell was by her 
husband's side, his only secretary and his 
most vigilant counselor. 

The courage and activity of Lady Rus- 
sell did not fail when the fatal sentence 
was pronounced. Her soul was one of 
those whose strength and hope are sus- 
tained above all human calculation, by 
love, duty, and confidence in God. Every 



70 Love in Marriage. 

effort was made to save the life of Lord 
Russell. Some of the most powerful 
men of the court entreated the king 
earnestly in his favor ; they urged that 
his pardon would impose a debt of grat- 
itude upon a noble family, while his pun- 
ishment would prove an injury never to 
be forgotten. It was also due to the 
daughter of Lord Southampton. Numer- 
ous letters were addressed to Lady Hussell 
to inform her of something further to bo 
attempted, or to designate the day, and 
hour, and place when she might throw 
herself at the king's feet, who would bo 
unable to refuse her, they believed. The 
Duke of York was petitioned as well as 
the king. He listened quietly, but made 
no reply. The king answered Monmouth 
hastily : " I would save him, but I cannot 
without breaking with my brother; say 
no more;" and to Lord Dartmouth; "All 



Love in Marriage. 71 

you say is true ; but it is as true that if I 
do not take bis life he will soon have 
mine. 1 ' Other more questionable means 
were tried : the Earl of Bedford offered 
the Duchess of Portsmouth fifty, and it is 
even said a hundred, thousand pounds 
sterling for the pardon of his son. Charles 
replied, " I will not purchase my own and 
my subjects' blood at so easy a rate." 
Lady Russell thought that her uncle, the 
Marquis de Ruvigny, coming expressly 
from Paris with the approval of Louis 
XIV., might have some influence with the 
king.* Ruvigny promised to be in Lon- 

* Lord John Russell, in his life of his illustrious ances- 
tor, (Life of Lord William Russell, vol. i, p. 14, and vol. ii, 
p. 76,) considers as very doubtful the statements of the 
attempts made in the name of Louis XIV. to save the life 
of Lord Russell, and the letters of Barillon making men- 
tion of them, fragments of which are quoted by Dalrymple. 
Lord Russell's doubts were very natural, for at that time 
he was not allowed the opportunity of verifying these 
citations from Dalrymple in our archives of foreign affairs. 



72 Love in Marriage. 

don. "I am very impatient, my clear 
niece, to be with you," he wrote. "The 
king arrived three days since, and he has 
had the goodness to consent to my jour- 
ney." It was even said that he would 
bear a letter from Louis XIV., requesting 
Charles to grant a pardon. "I do not 
wish to prevent the Marquis de Euvigny 
from coming here," said Charles to Baril- 

I have since examined these papers, and they prove 
that Barillon was really charged with some messages to 
Charles II. in favor of Lord Russell, though they were 
probably not too earnest. In a letter dated July 29th, 
(19th of July according to the old style, then maintained 
in England,) 1683, Barillon gives an account of his pro- 
ceedings to the king : " Yesterday I showed to the king 
of England a letter from M. de Ruvigny, and I said to 
him what your majesty had directed on the subject. The 
prince replied, 'I am very sure that the king, my brother, 
would not advise me to pardon a man who would have 
granted mo no quarter; I do not wish to prevent M. de 
Ruvigny from coming here, but Lord Russell's neck will 
be cut before his arrival. I owe this example to my own 
safety, and to the good of the state.' " — Archives of For- 
eign Affairs of France. 



Love in Marriage. 73 

Ion, a but my Lord Eussell's head will be 
off before he arrives." Kuvigny did not 
go. At the earnest request of his father, 
his friends, and doubtless also of his wife, 
Lord Kussell consented to write to the 
king and the Duke of York, asking par- 
don for himself, and representing " that he 
had never had the least thought against 
his majesty's life, nor any design to change 
the government, acknowledging that he 
had erred in attending unlawful meetings, 
and offering to spend the remainder of his 
life on the continent in whatever place the 
king should assign, and to meddle no more 
in the affairs of England." This attempt, 
which proved useless like all the others, 
cost Lord Eussell a great effort. As he 
finished his letter to the Duke of York, he 
said to Dr. Burnet : " This will be printed, 
and will be selling about the streets as my 
submission when I am hanged." 



74 Love in Marriage. 

One chance still remained, and to many 
it seemed the most hopeful, though it was 
indirect and singular. The question of the 
possible legality or the absolute illegality 
of all armed resistance to the lawful sov- 
ereign was strongly agitating the public 
mind. The court and patriotic parties 
were equally anxious to establish a prin- 
ciple by which their acts could be legally 
sustained ; for such is the noble nature of 
man that reason is a necessity to him ; he 
cannot even have the enjoyment of power 
if he feels that it is disavowed by justice 
and truth. The English Church main- 
tained unreservedly the unlawfulness of 
armed resistance. Two of its most up- 
right and most moderate dignitaries, Drs. 
Burnet and Tillotson, undertook to obtain 
Lord Russell's assent to their opinion, hop- 
ing to save his life if they could offer this 
submission to the king. At one time they 



Love in Makriage. 75 

thought he appeared a little shaken ; and 
Lord Halifax, to whom they related it, 
said that when he mentioned it to the 
king he had seemed more touched than 
with all the previous solicitations. Lord 
Eussell quietly listened to the redoubled 
efforts of the two theologians. Tillotson 
wrote him a letter to establish his position 
of non-resistance on the foundations of the 
Gospel. Lord Russell took the letter and 
withdrew to an adjoining apartment ; 
when he returned he said to the dean, 
"I have read your arguments, and am 
willing to be convinced, but cannot say 
that I am. For my part I cannot deny, 
but I have been of opinion, that a free 
nation like this might defend their relig- 
ion and liberties when invaded and taken 
from them, though under pretense and 
color of law. If I have sinned in this I 
hope God will not lay it to my charge, 



76 Love in Marriage. 

since be knows it was only a sin of igno- 
rance." Burnet persisted in endeavoring 
to draw further concessions from him. 
Lord Russell cut short the discussion, say- 
ing, "I cannot tell a lie; and if I go fur- 
ther I should lie." He conversed upon 
the question with his wife, and so far 
from encouraging any manifestation of 
weakness, she sadly approved and sus- 
tained him in his sincerity. It is even 
said that she was displeased with Tillot- 
son's persistance in discussing it. 

All these measures and all these hopes, 
however, successively failed. The fatal 
day approached. "I should wish," said 
Lord Russell to Dr. Burnet, "that my 
wife would give over beating every bush, 
and running hither and thither to save 
me; but when I consider that it will be 
some mitigation of her sorrow afterward 
to reflect that she has left nothing undone, 



Love in Maeriage. 77 

I acquiesce." When they were together 
they appeared mutually occupied in 
strengthening each other; when she left 
him he followed her with his eyes, and his 
emotion appeared overpowering; he con- 
quered himslf by a strong effort, and em- 
ployed his time entirely when alone or 
with Burnet and Tillotson in meditations, 
reading, and pious conversation. The 
19th of July, when informed that the 
petition for a reprieve had been rejected, 
and that the execution was fixed for the 
next day, he wrote a letter to the king, 
to be delivered after his death, which 
closed with these words: "I crave leave 
to end my days with this sincere protesta- 
tion, that my heart was ever devoted to 
that which I thought was your true in- 
terest ; in which, if I was mistaken, I hope 
your displeasure against me will end with 
my life, and that no part of it shall fall 



78 Love in Makeiage. 

on my wife and children; which is the 
last petition w T ill ever be offered from, 
may it please your majesty, your majesty's 
most faithful, most dutiful, and most obe- 
dient subject." The next day, the 20th, 
he received the sacrament from Tillotsou. 

" Do you believe all the articles of the 
Christian religion as taught by the Church 
of England V asked the dean. 

" Yes, truly." 

" Do you forgive all persons ?" 

" I do, from my heart."" 

After dinner he re-read and signed the 
paper which he intended to deliver to the 
sheriff on the scaffold, as his farewell to 
his life and his country, and gave Lady 
Russell all necessary directions for its pub- 
lication and circulation. Lady Ilussell 
then left him to return with his children. 
He kept them some time, conversed with 
her respecting their education and their 



Love in Marriage. 79 

future, embraced them, blessed them, and 
sent them away without any disturbance 
of his serenity. " Stay and sup with me," 
he said to his wife ; " let us take our 
last earthly food together." During sup- 
per and afterward he spoke particularly 
of his two daughters, and also of those 
great examples in which death was met 
with calmness and triumph of soul. To- 
ward ten o'clock he rose, took Lady Rus- 
sell by the hand, embraced her four or 
five times, while both remained silent and 
trembling, their eyes filled with tears, which 
did not fall. She departed. " Now," said 
Lord Russell to Burnet, the bitterness of 
death is past ;" and abandoning himself to 
his emotions he exclaimed, " What a bless- 
ing has she been to me ! What would have 
been my misery if she had not had that 
magnanimity of spirit, joined to her ten- 
derness, as never t$ have desired me to 



80 Love in Marriage. 

do a base thing to save my life ! What 
a week I should have passed, if she had 
been crying on me to turn informer and 
to be a Lord Howard ! God has granted 
me a signal providence in giving me such 
a wife, where there was birth, fortune, 
great understanding, great religion, and 
great kindness to me ; but her carriage in 
this extremity is beyond all ! It is a 
great comfort to me to leave my children 
in the hands of such a mother; she has 
promised to take care of herself for their 
sake, and she will do it.' 1 He stopped, 
and his thoughts returned to his own 
situation : " What a change death must 
make in us ! What new and wonderful 
scenes will open to the soul ! I have 
heard how some who were born blind 
were struck when^ by the couching of 
their cataracts, they saw; but what if 
the first thing they had seen had been 



Love in Marriage. 81 

the rising sun V He wound his watch and 
gave it to Burnet, saying, "I have done 
with time, now eternity comes." 

The next day, the 21st of July, Lady 
Russell was a widow, alone in her resi- 
dence at Southampton House, with her 
three children, two daughters of nine and 

seven years, and a son of three. 
6 



82 Love in Marriage. 



VIII. 
$fabg |iitsstU hi Mibotoboofr. 



Upon opening the letters written by 
Lady Russell after this terrible blow, one 
cannot suppress his surprise to find that 
the first two from her hand are addressed, 
the one directly and the other indirectly, 
to Charles II., to the king who had re- 
fused her the life of her husband. She had 
immediately retired from London with 
her children for Woburn Abbey, the seat 
of her father-in-law, the Earl of Bedford. 
Here she wrote to her uncle, John Russell, 
Colonel of the First Regiment of Foot : 

"Apology, dear uncle, is not necessary 
to you for any tiling I do, nor is my dis- 
composed mind fit to make any ; but I 



Love in Maeriage. 83 

want your assistance, so I ask it freely. 
You may remember, sir, that a very few 
days after my great and terrible calamity, 
the king sent me word he meant to take 
no advantage if anything was forfeited to 
him ; but terms of law must be observed, 
so now the grant for the personal estate 
is done, and in my hands, I esteem it fit 
to make some compliment of acknowledg- 
ment to his majesty. To do this for me 
is the favor I beg of you ; but I have 
writ the inclosed paper in such a manner 
that, if you judge it fit, you may, as you 
see cause, show it to the king, to let him 
see what thanks I desire should be made 
him. ... It is not without reluctance 
I write to you myself, since nothing that 
is not very sad can come from me; and 
I do not love to cause trouble to the 
friends and relatives of my beloved and 
now blessed husband." 



84 Love in Marriage. 

A report from the city soon reached 
Lady Russell in her retreat: so great a 
disturbance had been produced through- 
out the country by the publication of the 
paper which Lord Russell had given to 
the sheriff on the scaffold, that the Court 
had been induced to deny its authenticity. 
Lady Russell considered this an injurious 
attack ujDon the memory of her husband, 
and she hastened to write to the king: 

" May it please your Majesty : I find 
my husband's enemies are not appeased 
with his blood, but still continue to mis- 
represent him to your majesty. It is a 
great addition to my sorrows to hear your 
majesty is prevailed upon to believe that 
the paper he delivered to the sheriff at 
his death was not his own. I can truly 
say, and am ready in the solemnest man- 
ner to attest, that [during his imprison- 



Love in Marriage. 85 

ment*] I often heard him discourse the 
chiefest matters contained in that paper, 
in the same expressions he therein uses. 
I do, therefore, humbly beg your majesty 
would be so charitable to believe that he, 
who in all his life was observed to act 
with the greatest clearness and sincerity, 
would not at the point of death do so 
disingenuous and false a thing as to deliver 
for his own what was not properly and 
expressly so. I hope I have written 
nothing in this that will displease your 
majesty. If I have, I humbly beg of you 
to consider it as coming from a woman 
amazed with grief; and that you will par- 
don the daughter of a person who served 
your majesty's father in his greatest ex- 
tremities, [and your majesty in your great- 
est posts,] and one that is not conscious 
of having ever done anything to offend 

* The words included in the brackets are crossed out. 



86 Love in Marriage. 

you [before.] I shall ever pray for your 
majesty's long life and happy reign." 

It is a widow in despair; the fondly- 
devoted wife of a conspirator, executed a 
short time before on the scaffold for main- 
taining the right of resistance and the 
liberty of his country, who preserves and 
manifests so simply this profound monarchi- 
cal respect, this susceptibility so gentle in 
its language, though so lofty in its tone. 
Days, months, and years flowed by; she 
remained the same — entirely absorbed, but 
not overwhelmed in one sentiment — con- 
centrated in herself, and at the same time 
attentive, active, and even expansive to 
all interests around her. She had a con- 
fidential friend in Dr. Fitz-William, who 
was formerly her father's chaplain, and 
who was now rector of Cottenham and 
canon of Windsor. He was a man of 



Love m Marriage. 87 

deep piety, with a sympathetic heart and 
an elevated, fertile mind, who felt the 
tenderest interest for the noble daughter 
of his former patron, and he exerted him- 
self to sustain, console, and advance her 
through all her trials toward God and her 
eternal salvation. Lady Russell opened 
her heart to him ; to him she revealed 
all her inward conflicts, her paroxysms 
of grief, and her devotional self-conquests. 
I wish to present some of the most strik- 
ing characteristics of this correspondence ; 
not enough to fully reveal this great 
soul, but sufficient to make it understood 
in its rare and admirable union of fervor 
and good sense, tenderness of heart, and 
firmness of mind which never neutralized 
each other. During her forty years of 
widowhood she belonged exclusively to the 
memory of her adored husband, yet con- 
tinued active and attentive to all the rela- 



88 Love in Marriage. 

tions, affections, duties, and it may almost 
be said, all the interests of life around her. 
Shortly after her affliction, Dr. Fitz-Will- 
iam had sent her some religious counsels 
and forms of prayer to assist her in her 
devotional exercises. She replied to him : 
"I need not tell you, good doctor, how- 
little capable I have been of such an ex- 
ercise as this.* You will soon find how 
unfit I am still for it, since my yet dis- 
ordered thoughts can offer me no other 
than such words as express the deepest 
sorrows, and confused, as my yet amazed 
mind is. But such men as you, and par- 
ticularly one so much my friend, will, I 
know, bear w f ith my weakness, and com- 
passionate my distress, as you have already 
done by your good letter and excellent 
prayer. You that knew us both, and how 

* Her husband was executed, or rather murdered, 
July 21, 1683. 



Love in Marriage. 89 

we lived, must allow I have just cause to 
bewail my loss. I know it is common 
with others to lose a friend ; but to have 
lived with such a one, it may be ques- 
tioned how few can glory in the like hap- 
piness, so consequently lament the like 
loss. Who can but shrink at such a blow." 
And some days later : " God, who knows 
our frames, will not expect that when we are 
weak we should be strong. This is much 
comfort under my deep dejections, which 
are surely increased by the subtle malice 
of that great enemy of souls, taking all 
advantages upon my present weakened 
and wasted spirits, assaulting with divers 
temptations, as, when I have in any meas- 
ure overcome one kind, I find another in 
the room, as when I am less afflicted (as 
I before complained) then I find reflec- 
tions troubling me, as omissions of some 
sort or other; that if either greater persua- 



90 Love in Marriage. 

sions had been used, he had gone away ; 
or some errors at the trial amended, or 
other applications made, he might have 
been acquitted, and so yet have been in 
the land of the living, (though I discharge 
not these things as faults upon myself, yet 
as aggravations to my sorrows.") 

" Lord, let me understand the reason of 
these dark and wounding providences, that 
I sink not under the discouragements of 
my own thoughts ! I know I have de- 
served my punishment, and will be silent 
under it ; but yet secretly my heart mourns, 
too sadly I fear, and cannot be comforted, 
because I have not the dear companion 
and sharer of all my joys and sorrows. 
I want him to talk with, to walk w T ith, to 
eat and sleep with : all these things are 
irksome to me now; the day unwelcome, 
and the night so too. . . . When I see 
my children before me, I remember the 



Love in Marriage. 91 

pleasure he took in them ; this makes my 
heart shrink. ... O, if I did steadfastly 
believe, I could not be dejected; for I 
will not injure myself to say I offer my 
mind any inferior consolation to supply 
this loss. No ; I most willingly renounce 
this world — this vexatious, troublesome 
world — in which I have no other business 
but to rid my soul from siu, secure by 
faith and a good conscience, my eternal 
interests ; with patience and courage bear 
my eminent misfortunes, and ever here- 
after be above the smiles and frowns of 
it; and when I have done the remnant 
of the work appointed me on earth, then 
joyfully wait for the heavenly perfection 
in God's good time, when, by his infinite 
mercy, I may be accounted worthy to 
enter into the same place of rest and re- 
pose where he is gone for whom only 
I grieve." 



92 Love in Marriage. 

After having passed ten months in soli- 
tude and quiet, she felt the necessity of a 
change of scene. She wrote to Dr. Fitz- 
William on the 20th of April, 1684: "I 
am entertaining some thoughts of going 
to that now desolate place Stratton for a 
few days, where I must expect new amaz- 
ing reflections at first, it being a place 
where I have lived in sweet and full con- 
tent; considered the condition of others, 
and thought none deserved my envy ; but 
I must pass no more such days on earth ; 
however, places are indeed nothing. Where 
can I dwell that his figure is not present 
to me ! Nor would I have it otherwise ; 
so I resolve that shall be no bar, if it 
proves requisite for the better acquit- 
ting any obligation upon me." And 
five months after, the first of October 
of the same year: "I have resolved to 
try that desolate habitation of mine at 



Love in Marriage. 93 

London this winter. The doctor agrees 
that it is the best place for nay boy, and 
I have no argument to balance that, nor 
could take the resolution to see London 
till that was urged; but by God's per- 
mission I will try how I can endure that 
place, in thought a place of terror to me ; 
but I know if sorrow had not another 
root, that will vanish in a few days." 

She did not immediately execute this 
project, and six weeks after she wrote to 
the doctor : " I have, you find, sir, lingered 
out my time here; and I think none will 
wonder at it, that will reflect the place 
I am going to remove to was the scene of 
so much lasting sorrow to me, and where 
I acted so unsuccessful a part for the pre- 
servation of a life I could sure have laid 
down mine to have had continued. It 
was, doctor, an inestimable treasure I did 
lose, and with whom I had lived in the 



94 Love in Marriage. 

highest pitch of this world's felicity. But 
I must remember I have a better friend, 
a more abiding, whom I desire with an 
inflamed heart to know, not alone as good 
in a way of profit, but amiable in a way 
of excellency ; then spiritual joy will grap- 
ple with earthly griefs, and so far over- 
come as to give some tranquillity to a 
mind so tossed to and fro, as mine has 
been with the evils of this life ; yet I have 
but the experience of short moments of 
this desirable temper, and fear to have 
fewer when I first come to that desolate 
habitation and place, where so many sev- 
eral passions will assault me ; but having 
so many months mourned the substance, 
I think (by God's assistance) the shadows 
will not sink me." 

God, indeed, came to her aid, and 
though she sometimes sunk into abysses 
of grief, she never failed to rise from 



Love in Maeeiage. 95 

them; the well-balanced firmness of her 
mind and the profound piety of her heart 
enabling her conscientiously to avoid all 
exaggeration of sentiment in the appre- 
ciation of herloi The two following let- 
ters are admirable proofs. The first is 
dated Woburn, October 11, 1685: 

" Who can praise God's mercies more 
than wretched I, that he has not cut me 
off in anger, who have taken his chastise- 
ment so heavily, not weighing his mercies 
in the midst of j udgments ! The stroke 
was of the fiercest, sure ; but had I not 
then a reasonable ground to hope that 
what I loved as I did my own soul, was 
raised from a prison to a throne ? Was 
I not enabled to shut up my own sorrows 
that I increased not his sufferings by see- 
ing mine? How were my sinking spirits 
supported by the early compassions of 
excellent and wise Christians, without ceas- 



96 Love in Marriage. 

ing, admonishing me of my duty, instruct- 
ing, reproving, comforting me ! He has 
spared me hitherto the children of so 
excellent a friend, giving them hopeful 
understandings, and yet very tractable 
and sweet dispositions; spared my life in 
usefulness I trust to them ; and being I 
am to linger in a world I can no more 
delight in, has given me a freedom from 
bodily pain to a degree I almost never 
knew ; not so much as a strong fit of the 
headache have I felt since that miserable 
time, who used to be tormented with it 
very frequently. This calls for praises 
my dead heart is not exercised in, but I 
hope this is my infirmity ; I bewail it. He 
that took our nature, and felt our infirmi- 
ties, knows the weakness of my person, 
and the sharpness of my sorrows." 
The second is dated July 11, 1686: 
" I know, sir, I am very tedious ; and 



Love in Marriage. 97 

if it be impertinent, I know also you will 
take it as if it were not so. Now I take 
this freedom scarce with anybody else ; 
but it is a great indulgence to myself, 
and I am very certain you are pleased I 
should use it. I find it most especially 
useful on the return of these my saddest 
days, when dismal and yet astonishing 
remembrances crowd fastest into my 
mind. It is true, we can (you are sure) 
bear the occasions of grief without being 
sunk and drowned in those passions; but 
to bear them without a murmuring heart 
then is the task, and in failing there lies 
the sin. O, Lord, lay it not to the charge 
of thy weak servant ; but make me cheer- 
fully thankful that I had such a friend to 
lose, and contented that he has had dis- 
mission from his attendance here, (an ex- 
pression you use I am much pleased with.) 

When my time comes that I shall have 

7 



98 Love in Marriage. 

mine, I know not how it will find me 
then ; but I am sure it is my best reviv- 
ing thought now ; when I am plunged in 
multitudes of wild and sad thoughts, I 
recover and recollect a little time will end 
this life, and begin a better that shall 
never end, and where we shall discover 
the reasons and ends of all those seeming 
severe providences we have known. Thus 
I seem to long for the last clay, and yet 
it is j)ossible if sickness, or any other 
forerunner of our dissolution were present, 
I would defer it if I could, so deceitful 
are our hearts, or so weak is our faith. 
But I think, one may argue again, that 
God has wisely implanted in our nature a 
shrinking at the approach of a separation, 
and that may make us content, if not 
desire a delay. If it were not so im- 
planted there, many would not endure 
the evils of life, that now do it, though 



Love in Mareiage. 99 

they are taught duty that obliges us 
thereto." 

She wrote sometimes with unreserved 
confidence, as to her sentiments, to those 
persons who had rendered important serv- 
ices or manifested genuine sympathy in 
her affliction. Lord Halifax, among others, 
had interceded with the king at the time 
of Lord Russell's execution for permission 
to have his family escutcheon placed over 
the door of his house, as would have been 
done if he had died a natural death. This 
favor he had obtained with great diffi- 
culty. He had continued the most affec- 
tionate relations with Lady Russell, and 
had doubtless at some time attempted to 
offer her some of those cold consolations 
which can only satisfy souls that do not 
need to be consoled, for she wrote to him : 

"My Lord, for my part, I think the 
man a very indifferent reasoner, who to 



100 Love in Marriage. 

do well must take with indifference what- 
ever happens to him. It is very fine to 
say, Why should we complain that is taken 
back which was but lent us, and lent us 
but for a time, we know; and so on. 
They are the receipts of philosophers I 
have no reverence for, as I have not for 
anything which is unnatural. It is in- 
sincere. And I dare say they did dis- 
semble, and felt what they would not own. 
I know I cannot dispute with Almighty 
power; but yet if my delight is gone, I 
must needs be sorry it is taken away, 
according to the measure it made me 
glad. 

" The Christian religion only, believe 
me, my lord, has a power to make the 
spirit easy under great calamity; nothing 
less than the hope of being again made 
happy can satisfy the mind: I am sure 
I owe more to it than I could have done 



Love in Maeeiage. 101 

to the world, if all tlie glories of it had 
been offered me, or to be disposed by me." 
God reserved for her efficacious but 
bitter consolations the fearful prospect of 
new afflictions. Her son, scarcely four 
years of age, fell dangerously sick, and re- 
covered only at the last extremity. a God 
has been pitiful to my small grace," 
she wrote to Dr. Fitz-William, "and re- 
moved a threatened blow, which must 
have quickened my sorrows, if not added 
to them — the loss of my poor boy. He 
has been ill, and God has let me see the 
folly of my imaginations, which made me 
apt to conclude I had nothing left, the 
deprivation of which could be matter of 
much anguish, or its possession of any con- 
siderable refreshment. I have felt the 
falseness of the first notion, for I know 
not how to part, with tolerable ease, from 
the little creature. I desire to do so of 



102 Love in Marriage. 

the second, and that my thankfulness for 
the real blessing of these children may 
refresh my laboring, wearied mind, with 
some joy and satisfaction, at least in my 
endeavors to do that part toward them 
their most dear and tender father would 
not have omitted; and which, if success- 
ful, though early made unfortunate, may 
conduce to their happiness for the time to 
come here and hereafter. When I have 
done this piece of duty to my best friend 
and them, how gladly would I lie down 
by that beloved dust I lately went to 
visit, (that is, the case that holds it.) It 
is a satisfaction to me you did not dis- 
approve of what I did in it, as some do 
that it seems have heard of it, though I 
never mentioned it to any besides yourself. 
" Doctor, I had considered, I went not 
to seek the living among the dead ; I 
knew I should not see him any more 



Love in Makriage. 103 

wherever I went, and had made a cove- 
nant with myself not to break out in 
unreasonable, fruitless passion, but quicken 
my contemplation whither the nobler part 
was fled, to a country afar off, where no 
earthly power bears any sway, nor can put 
an end to a happy society ; there I would 
willingly be, but we must not limit our 
time : I hope to wait without impatience. 1 ' 
She waited long for that blessed re- 
union so sincerely desired, though she 
was not deluded by her grief regarding 
the weakness of our nature in that respect. 
While awaiting it as the years flowed on, 
she treated herself in her grief as we are 
obliged to submit to a chronic disease 
with which we learn to live when it is 
found that there is no hope of a cure. 
Notwithstanding the void in her heart, 
her life was active ; she was constantly 
employed without ever ceasing to feel 



104 Love in Marriage. 

her great loss. The education of her chil- 
dren, their advancement, her domestic 
affairs, the interests and prosperity of her 
neighbors, were all the objects of her 
assiduous cares. "I am delighted," wrote 
Burnet, " that you devote so much of your 
time to your children, that they have no 
need of a governess," and her daughters 
never had any other. She was careful 
that her habitual sadness should not dis- 
turb the happiness which belonged to 
their age. " The poor children," she wrote, 
"are well pleased to be a little while in 
a new place, ignorant of how much better 
it has been, both to me and them; yet 
I thought I found Rachael not insensible, 
and I could not but be content with it in 
my mind. Those whose age can afford 
them any remembrance should, methinks, 
have some solemn thoughts for so irre- 
parable a loss to themselves and family; 



Love in Maeeiage. 105 

though after that I would cherish a cheer- 
ful temper in them with all the industry 
I can ; for sure we please our Maker best 
when we take all his providences with a 
cheerful spirit." 

For her father-in-law, the Earl of Bed- 
ford, she entertained the most grateful 
affection. When he lost his wife she gave 
up her plans for traveling, and remained 
with him. " I would not choose," she said, 
" to leave a good man under a new oppres- 
sion of sorrow, wdio has been and is so 
very tender to me." 

It was to Lady Kussell that the dif- 
ferent members of the family turned in 
all the important circumstances which con- 
cerned them. At the request of the parties 
she made the arrangements for the mar- 
riage of her brother-in-law, Edward Rus- 
sell, with a daughter of Lord Gainsborough, 
father-in-law of her sister Elizabeth. It 



106 Love in Marriage, 

was well known that her counsel would 
be judicious, and that her approval would 
have great influence. U I have done it," 
she said on one of these occasions, " though 
I wish she had made choice of any other 
person than myself, who desiring to know 
the world no more, am utterly unfitted 
for the management of anything in it, but 
must, as I can, engage in such necessary 
offices to my children as I cannot be dis- 
pensed from, nor desire to be, since it is an 
eternal obligation upon me, to the memory 
of a husband, to whom, and his, I have 
dedicated the few and sad remainder of my 
days in this vale of misery and trouble." 

The event, so important to so tender 
a mother, arrived earlier than she had 
expected. Her daughter Rachael was 
only fourteen years of age when Lord 
Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, asked her 
in marriage for his eldest son, who was 



Love m Marriage. 107 

but sixteen. This nobleman had been the 
most intimate and devoted friend of Lord 
Russell ; he had even urged him to change 
clothes and escape from the Tower, while 
he remained a prisoner in his place, which 
was unhesitatingly refused by Lord Russell. 
Deeply touched by the sentiment which 
had dictated the proposition, and sensible 
of the honor of the alliance, Lady Russell 
accepted the offer with frank gratification. 
" I trust," she wrote to Dr. Fitzwilliam, 
" if I perfect this great work, my careful 
endeavors will prosper; only the Almighty 
knows what the event shall be ; but sure 
it is a glimmering of light I did not look 
for in my dark day. I do often repeat 
in my thoughts, the children of the just 
shall be blessed; I am persuaded their 
father was such ; and if my heart deceive 
me not, I intend the being so, and humbly 
bless God for it." 



108 Love in Marriage. 

The settlements of the respective for- 
tunes were difficult to arrange ; the most 
elevated sentiments are sometimes united 
with obstinate and exacting demands. 
"I have a well-bred lord to deal with," 
said Lady Russell, "yet inflexible if the 
point is not to his advantage." The in- 
terviews and discussions necessitated by 
the business negotiations wearied her. " I 
am forced to be with a great many law- 
yers, which is very troublesome at this time 
to me, who would fain be delivered from 
them, conclude my affair, and so put some 
period to that inroad methinks I make in 
my intended manner of living the rest of my 
days on earth. But I hope my duty shall 
always prevail above the strongest inclina- 
tion I have. I believe to assist my yet 
helpless children is my business; which 
makes me take many dinners abroad, and 
do of that nature many things, the per- 



Love in Marriage. 109 

forniance of which is hard enough to a 
heavy and weary mind ; but yet I bless 
God I do it." 

The final arrangements were completed 
at last, and on the 21st of June, 1688, her 
daughter married Lord Cavendish. The 
young couple departed immediately to 
travel upon the continent. 

JudgiDg from appearances, it might be 
supposed that Lady Russell's life was spent 
in strict privacy with her sad but pre- 
cious remembrances, her religious medi- 
tations, and her family cares and duties. 
But it was not so. Hers was not a mind 
of much variety or fertility, and she was 
not spontaneously inclined to seek or find 
subjects of excitement or interest without. 
Left to herself, and to the routine of ordi- 
nary life, she would perhaps have remained 
a stranger to the great questions and 
events of her time; but she entered into 



110 Love in Marriage. 

them naturally, through sympathy with 
her husband, and she was capable of 
comprehending and enjoying whatever 
was elevated. She remained as faithful 
to the cause of Lord Kussell in her retire- 
ment as she was to his memory ; and she 
was constantly interested in the same 
questions of religious and political liberty 
which would have been the subjects of 
their common solicitude and private dis- 
cussion if he had remained with her. The 
Eevocation of the Edict of Nantes called 
forth not only her deepest sympathy for 
the suffering Protestants, but some original 
and profound moral reflections. " I will 
take your advice," she wrote to Dr. Fitz- 
William, "and vie my state with others, 
and begin with him in the highest pros- 
perity, as himself thinks, the king of a 
miserable people ; but truly the most mis- 
erable himself, by debasing as he does 



Love in Marriage. Ill 

the dignity of human nature ; and though 
for secret ends of Providence he is suffered 
to make those poor creatures drink deep 
of a most bitter cup, yet the dregs are 
surely reserved for himself. What a judg- 
ment is it upon an aspiring mind, when 
perhaps half the world knows not God, nor 
confesses the name of Christ as a Saviour, 
nor the beauty of virtue, which almost all 
the world has in derision, that it should 
not excite him to a reformation of faith 
and manners ; but with such a rage turn 
his power to extirpate a people that own 
the Gospel for their law and rule !" 

All that transpired in her own country 
interested her yet more deeply: the trial 
and death of Algernon Sidney ; the acces- 
sion of James II., the progress of his 
tyranny; the insurrection of Monmouth, 
and the sufferings endured by many of 
her friends in the cause which was so dear 



t 

112 Love in Makriage. 

to her, revived the most cruel remembran- 
ces in her heart. At times she drew unex- 
pected consolation from these misfortunes. 
" The new scenes of each day," she writes 
to a friend, " make me often conclude my- 
self very void of temper and reason, that 
I still shed tears of sorrow and not of joy, 
that so good a man is landed safe on the 
hajDpy shore of a blessed eternity. Doubt- 
less he is at rest, though I find none with- 
out him, so true a partner he was in all 
my joys and griefs. I trust the Almighty 
will pass by this my infirmity; I speak 
it in respect to the world, from whose 
enticing delights I can now be better 
weaned." 

But these efforts of a devoted nature 
could not long appease real anxieties and 
real troubles. The religious and political 
situation of England became every day 
darker; and Lady Russell, who was pas- 



Love m Marriage. 113 

sionately attached to her country, was 
increasingly pained and alarmed for her 
children, for the nation, and for the future 
of that cause for which Lord Russell had 
perished. 



114 Love in Marriage. 



IX. 



The Ke volution of 1688 drew Lady 
Russell from her life of monotonous grief. 
After five years of widowhood and pain- 
ful sympathy with the defeat of the politi- 
cal party with which she was identified 
she suddenly found herself triumphant 
though under the burden of her grief. 
The two months between the landing of 
the Prince of Orange and the final flight 
of King James she spent at Woburn. 
Though far from the noise and excite- 
ments of London, with her father-in-law 
and her children, she was well informed 
of all that transpired, and followed the 
course of events with the restrained ardor 



Love in Maeeiage. 115 

of an intelligent soul, knowing the uncer- 
tainty of great enterprises, but placing with 
a religious trust her country and her family 
in the hands of God. Her letters show 
that she eagerly read the articles published 
on both sides in the journals of the day, 
and that she was familiar with the details 
of incidents both in the city and in the 
Court. Anxious for the fullest information, 
when she learned that the Prince of Orange 
and Dr. Burnet had arrived at Salisbury 
she wrote to the latter by a special messen- 
ger: "The bearer leaves Woburn with no 
other errand than to carry this paper and 
return, charged, I hope, with such good 
reports as every good soul wishes, for 
curiosity may be too eager, and therefore 
not to be justified; but now it is unavoid- 
able. I do not ask you should satisfy 
any part of it, further than you can in six 
lines ; but I would see something of your 



116 Love in Marriage. 

handwriting upon English ground, and not 
read in print only the labor of your brain." 
Toward the termination of these events 
Lady Kussell went with the Earl of Bed- 
ford to spend some days in London ; it 
was probably at that time that King 
James asked the assistance of the Duke 
of Bedford ; the venerable nobleman re- 
plied, "Sire, I had a son who might have 
been now the support of your majesty !" 
Lady Russell was almost a witness of the 
decisive scenes which placed William III. 
upon the throne. "Those who have 
lived longest," she wrote to Dr. Fitz- 
William, " and therefore seen the most 
change, can scarce believe it is more than 
a dream ; yet it is indeed real, and so 
amazing a reality of mercy, as ought to 
melt and ravish our hearts into subjection 
and resignation to Him who is the dis- 
penser of all providences." 



Love in Marriage. 117 

Though Lady Russell had maintained 
no relations with the Prince of Orange, 
they were neither unknown nor indifferent 
to each other. William knew too well 
the value of Lord Russell's name in En- 
gland, and the respect paid to his widow, 
not to be careful to recognize them in 
advance. When he sent his embassador 
Dykenelt to London in 1687, he gave him 
orders to visit Lady Russell and express to 
her in his name his profound esteem and 
great respect for her. I transcribe ver- 
batim the recital given of this interview 
from the hand of Lady Russell, written 
the 24th of March, 1687. "I have re- 
ceived," she said, "a visit from Mr. Dyke- 
nelt, the Dutch embassador. He spoke in 
French to this effect: To condole on the 
part of the Prince and Princess of Orange 
my terrible misfortunes, of which they 
had a very feeling sense, and continued 



118 Love in Marriage. 

still to have so ; and as my loss was very 
great, so they believed my sorrow still 
was such ; that for my person in particu- 
lar, as also my own family and that I had 
married into, they had great respect and 
value, and should always readily take all 
occasions to show it; that it would be a 
great pleasure to them, if it would give 
any ease to my thoughts, to take the assur- 
ance that if ever it should come to be in 
their power, there was nothing I could 
ask that they should not find a content 
in granting. That for the re-establishing 
of my son, what I should at any time see 
reason to ask would be done in as full and 
ample a manner as was possible ; that he 
did not deliver this message in a private 
capacity, but as a public minister. Then 
again he enlarged his compliment, giving 
me the content to tell me the high thoughts 
the prince always had, and still preserved, 



Love in Marriage. 119 

of my excellent lord; that his highness had 
never accused his intentions even at the 
time of his suffering, and had considered 
and lamented it as a great blow to the 
best interest of England, the Protestant 
religion; that he had frequently before 
heard the prince take occasion to speak of 
him, and that he ever did it as of one he 
had the best thoughts of one could have 
of a man. 

"And he said (with protestations that 
he did not do so to make an agreeable 
compliment to me) that he found the very 
same justice given to his memory here, 
and that so universal, that even those 
who pretended no partiality to his person 
or actings yet bore a reverence to his 
name ; all allowing him that integrity, 
honor, courage, and zeal to his country, to 
the highest degree a man can be charged 
with, and in this age, perhaps singular to 



120 Love in Marriage. 

himself; and, lie added, all this completed 
with great piety. "Words to this effect 
(as near as my memory can carry it) he 
several times repeated, and gave (as he 
termed it) one remarkable instance, at 
what rate such who were not his pro- 
fessed friends esteemed his loss. It was 
this, that dining at Mr. Skel ton's (then 
the king of England's resident in Holland) 
immediately after the news had come 
thither of my lord's sufferings, and Mr. 
Dycknelt taking notice of what had passed, 
and in such a manner as was most proper 
for him to do to Mr. Skelton, Mi*. Skel- 
ton sat silent when he named the Lord 
Essex; but that upon my Lord Russell's 
name he replied upon it, 'The king has 
indeed taken the life of one man; but he 
has lost a thousand, or thousands, by it.' 
Mr. Dycknelt then added, 'This I know 
to be the very sense of so many that I 



Love in Marriage. 121 

should not have repeated it but for this 
reason, I do it because Mr. Skelton 
said it.'" 

When William III. was proclaimed king, 
he hastened to confirm with emphasis the 
words which two years before his minister 
had addressed to Lady Russell. On the 
13th of February, 1689, after accepting 
in the morning the crown which Parlia- 
ment had conferred upon them, King 
William and Queen Mary held in the 
evening their first reception at Whitehall. 
Lady Russell was not present — a stranger 
to all worldly pomps, she neither left her re- 
tirement nor laid aside her mourning ; but 
her daughter, Lady Cavendish, appeared 
at Court with her mother-in-law, the 
Countess of Devonshire. "I have kissed 
the queen's hand, and the king's also," 
she wrote the next day to her cousin, 
Jane Allington. "There was a world of 



122 Love in Marriage. 

bonfires, and candles almost in every house, 
which looked extremely pretty* The 
king applies himself mightily to business, 
and is wonderfully admired for his great 
wisdom and prudence in ordering all 
things. He is a man of no presence, but 
looks very homely at first sight; but if 
one looks long on him, he has something 
in his face both wise and good. But as 
for the queen, she is really altogether very 
handsome ; her face is very agreeable, and 
her shape and motions extremely graceful 
and fine. She is tall, but not so tall as 
the last queen. Her room was mighty 
full of company, as you may guess." 

Political acts very quickly followed 
these royal courtesies. A bill was adopted 
in Parliament, stigmatizing the condemna- 
tion of Lord Russell as murder. One of 
the articles declared that "the bill was 
presented at the request of the Earl of 



Love in Marriage, 123 

Bedford and Lady Russell." Sir Thomas 
Clarges demanded that these words should 
he omitted. "The justice of the nation," 
said he, "is of more importance than the 
wishes of any private person; this bill is 
not granted as a favor; all England is 
interested in it." This was the second 
act which William signed after his corona- 
tion. Soon after, in order to manifest his 
favor at the same time to the two families, 
united by domestic ties as well as by 
political sentiments, he conferred the title 
of Duke upon the Earls of Bedford and 
Devonshire. The letters patent to the new 
Duke of Bedford declared that "among 
the reasons for conferring this honor, this 
was not the least, that he was the father 
to Lord Russell, the ornament of his age, 
whose great merits it was not enough 
to transmit to posterity, but they (the 
king and queen) were willing to record 



124 Love in Maeeiage. 

them in their royal patent, to remain in 
the family as a monument consecrated to 
his consummate virtue, whose name could 
never be forgot so long as men preserved 
any esteem for sanctity of manners, great- 
ness of mind, and a love to their country, 
constant even to death." 

Domestic enjoyments came to Lady Rus- 
sell at the same time with these political 
honors and reparations. She married her 
second daughter, Catherine, to Lord Ross, 
eldest son of the Duke of Rutland ; and 
her son, Lord Tavistock, only fifteen 
years of age, to Miss Howland, a rich 
heiress of Surrey County. In none of these 
arrangements, however, were her decisions 
precipitate, or influenced only by considera- 
tions of rank and fortune. She hesitated 
some time before consenting to her daugh- 
ter's alliance with the family of the Duke 
of Rutland on account of some scruples 



Love in Makkiage. 125 

concerning a divorce ; and she refused a 
richer marriage for her son than the one 
he finally contracted. The brilliancy of 
these alliances and the family prosperity 
naturally attracted public attention ; but 
no one appeared surprised or envious ; the 
nation openly manifested its sympathy for 
the justice of God to virtue in affliction. 
The relatives and friends of the Russell, 
Cavendish, and Wriothesley families de- 
lighted in relating to Lady Russell in her 
retreat at Southampton House accounts 
of the gay festivals to which she remained 
a stranger. After her marriage with Lord 
Ross, her. daughter Catherine was con- 
ducted by her husband to Belvoir, the 
family seat of her father-in-law, the Duke 
of Rutland. On this occasion Sir James 
Forbes, the same gentleman who ten years 
before had borne to the condemned Lord 
Russell the proposal of Lord Cavendish 



126 Love in Marriage. 

to take his place in prison, wrote to Lady 
Russell: "Lord Ross and Lady Ross's 
journey, and their reception at Belvoir, 
looked more like the progress of a king 
and queen through their country, than 
that of a bride and bridegroom going 
home to their father's house. At their 
first entry into Leicestershire they were 
received by the High Sheriff at the head 
of all the gentlemen of the county, who 
all paid their respects and complimented 
the lady bride at Harborough. She was 
attended next day to this place by the 
same gentlemen, and by thousands of 
other people, who came from all places 
of the country to see her, and to wish 
them both joy, even with huzzas and 
acclamations. 

"As they drew near to Belvoir our 
train increased, with some coaches, and 
with fresh troops of aldermen and corpo- 



Love in Maeriage. 127 

rations, besides a great many clergymen, 
who presented the bride and bridegroom 
(for so they are still called) with verses 
upon their happy marriage." 

While these aristocratic and popular 
festivals were detailed to Lady Russell, 
she received congratulations from her re- 
ligious friends, which doubtless harmonized 
better with her frame of mind. "You 
have passed through very different scenes 
of life," wrote Burnet, who had now be- 
come Bishop of Salisbury. "God has 
reserved the best to the last. I do 
make it a standing part of my poor 
prayers twice a day, that as now your 
family is the greatest in its three branches 
that has been in England in our age, so 
that it may in every one of these answer 
those blessings by an exemplary holiness, 
and that both you and they may be pub- 
lic blessings to the age and nation." 



128 Love m Marriage. 

At the time of her son's marriage she 
received a proposition for him as singular 
as it was flattering. A general re-election 
was preparing for the House of Commons ; 
the Duke of Shrewsbury, grand Seneschal 
of the Crown, and Lord Somers, Keeper 
of the Seal, begged Lady Russell to allow 
her son, notwithstanding his youth, (he 
was but fifteen,) to be presented as a 
candidate at the elections for Middlesex 
County. " I made all the objections to 
their lordships," Sir James Forbes" wrote 
to her on this occasion, "that I think the 
Duke of Bedford or your ladyship can 
make, yet they were still of one opinion, 
that it is your interest and for the honor 
of the family that he should stand at 
present; and being joined with Sir John 
Worsename, a very honest man, who is 
recommended by my Lord Keeper, they 
doubt not but they will carry it with a 



Love in Marriage. 129 

high hand, and thereby keep out two 
notorious tories, which can never be done 
otherwise. When I told their lordships 
that my Lord Tavistock was soon going 
to Cambridge, and afterward to travel 
for two or three years, the Duke of 
Shrewsbury answered that they would not 
hinder anything of that design ; for he 
needed not to appear but once at the 
election, when he would be attended by 
several thousands of gentlemen, and other 
persons on horseback out of town, and 
the charges would be but little or 
nothing; and the Duke of Shrewsbury 
bid me tell your ladyship that if you 
did consent he should stand, which he 
doubted not but you would, since it was 
on so good an account, that then they 
must have leave to set him up for that 
day only by the name of Lord Russell, 
which would brin^ ten thousand more on 



130 Love in Marriage. 

his side, if there be so many freeholders 
in the county." 

What temptations for the maternal love 
and pride of Lady Russell ! 



Love in Makkiage. 131 



X. 

J|*r §fesi gags> 

She did not yield to these temptations ; 
she had two great forces to defend her; 
her piety and her grief. On the occasion 
of the titles and honors conferred upon the 
Russell family, "I would have assisted," 
she said, " to my power for the procuring 
thereof, but for any sensible joy at these 
outward things I feel none." She declined 
with a good sense full of modesty, the 
premature triumph that politics offered to 
her son. Inclosing the letter of Sir James 
Forbes to her brother-in-law, Lord Ed- 
ward Russell, she requested his lordship 
to consult the Duke of Shrewsbury on 
the proposal, and expressed her doubt 



132 Love in Marriage. 

■whether the latter had maturely con- 
sidered the subject. She reminds him of 
the serious interruption which the educa- 
tion of her son must suffer by his election 
to Parliament, an interruption which she 
feared might be irreparable in the future. 

Maternal wisdom triumphed over party 
interests, and instead of presenting her 
son at the elections of Middlesex County, 
Lord Tavistock went to complete his 
education at Oxford, " where our young 
nobility," she wrote to Dr. Fitz-Williain, 
"should pass some of their time; it has 
been for many years neglected." 

In the simplest incidents of private life 
she displayed the same correct judgment, 
uprightness, and moral delicacy; admon- 
ished and guarded by these against the 
prejudices, thoughtlessness, carelessness, 
and haughtiness too common in aristo- 
cratic old age. Before deciding to give 



Love in Marriage. 133 

her daughter Catherine to the son of the 
Duke of Rutland, she asks the latter 
"whether your lordship does not think 
we owe this to the young couple, that 
they should see one another a little more 
than they have done (and so at least 
guess at each other's humor) before we 
venture to make them, as I hope they 
shall be, a happy couple?" 

Some years later she had at her dis- 
posal two ecclesiastical benefices, in virtue 
of her right of patronage. She wrote to 
one of her friends, Sir Robert Worsley, 
"I find both places well disposed to re- 
ceive Mr. Swayne. I hope he is worthy 
of the gift, and believe you think him so. 
If you should know anything why he is 
not, though as a friend you might wish he 
were the incumbent, yet I am persuaded 
that in a just regard to the weight of the 
matter, and to me who ask it from you, 



134 Love in Marriage. 

if you know any visible reason that he is 
not a proper person for such a preferment, 
that you will caution me in it; for I pro- 
fess to you, sir, I think the care of so 
many souls is a weighty charge ; and I 
have been willing to take time to consider 
whose hands I put these into. I can, with 
all my scruples, make no exception to Mr. 
Swayne." 

So much virtue and wisdom, seen 
through such various trials, in the midst 
of prosperity as well as in the bitterest 
adversity, gave her a consideration and 
almost a moral authority with the people 
as well as with the Court which few 
women have obtained who have made 
much more noise in the world. After 
their elevation to the throne, as before, 
King William and Queen Mary continued 
to manifest the same interest, and the 
same regard for her wishes. At the time 



Love in Marriage. 135 

of the Revolution, when the formal adhe- 
sion of the Princess Anne was necessary 
for the coronation of the Prince of Orange, 
Lady Churchill, afterward Duchess of 
Marlborough, and confidant of the prin- 
cess, would not advise her to take this 
step " till I had consulted," she says, " with 
several persons of undisputed wisdom and 
integrity, and particularly with Lady Rus- 
sell of Southampton House, and Dr. Til- 
lotson, afterward Archbishop of Canter- 
bury." Tillotson hesitated some time be- 
fore accepting the archbishopric from the 
hand of a king whose title was not yet 
recognized by a part of the English 
Church. Lady Russell influenced his final 
decision. Consulted by him on several 
occasions, and informed of the earnest re- 
quests made to him by the king, after 
having examined and discussed the doc- 
tor's scruples, she wrote to him, "The 



136 Love ix Marriage. 

time seems to be come that you must put 
anew in practice that submission you have 
so powerfully both tried yourself and 
instructed others to. . . . Sir, I believe 
you would be as much a common good 
as you can ; consider how few of ability 
and integrity this age produces. Pray do 
not turn this matter too much in your 
head ; when one has once turned it every 
way, you know that more does but per- 
plex, and one never sees the clearer 
for it." 

With her more intimate friend, Dr. 
Fitz -William, she was not equally success- 
ful. Either from real scruples of con- 
science or from timidity in hearing the 
opinion of a part of his Church, he refused 
to take the oath and resigned his benefice. 
Lady Russell endeavored to dissuade him 
from this resolution, though equally con- 
scientious with himself. She wrote to 



Love ik Marriage. 137 

him, "And all this is the acceptation of 
a word which I never heard two declare 
the meaning of but they differed in their 
sense of it. You say you could have 
taken it in the sense some worthy men 
have done. Why will you be more wor- 
thy than those men ? It is supererogation. 
When I began to write in this paper I 
meant not one word of all I have said 
on this subject ; but I know, good doctor, 
you will take it right; accept well of my 
good meaning toward you, and excuse 
my defects. I pretend not to argue ; but 
where my wishes are earnest, I speak 
without reserve; sometimes by surprise; 
but take it as it is." 

This difference of opinion did not, how- 
ever, change their pious relations to each 
other for a moment. 

On all occasions, and with all her con- 
nections, after the triumph of her cause, 



138 Love ik Marriage. 

and amid her own successes, Lady Russell 
was as judicious, as far from all elation, 
as liberal in mind and heart, as she had 
been firm and constant in her reverses. 
In but a single instance have I found 
her exacting and peremptory. She had 
warmly interested herself to have a dis- 
tinguished young man of her acquaintance 
made one of the king's Council. Her 
protege was William Cowper, who after- 
ward became Earl Cowper, and in the 
reign of George I., Lord Chancellor. The 
request met many strong objections ; a 
dispensation of age was necessary. Lady 
Russell insisted, first with Lord Halifax, 
and afterward with Sir H. Pollexfeu, 
Attorney-General of the Crown. Her let- 
ter to the latter closes with this sentence : 
U I undertake very few things, and there- 
fore do very little good to people; but 
I do not love to be balked when I thought 



Love in Marriage. 139 

my end compassed." It is the only case 
of pretension I have discovered in this 
upright and modest nature; justified, it is 
true, by the merit for which she plead, 
but yet bearing a slight impress of pride 
and exaction. 

Lady Kussell really knew herself bet- 
ter, and judged herself more harshly than 
the most rigid moralist could have done. 
After her death an unfinished paper was 
found, written in the trembling hand of 
age, in which under a form of prayer she 
reviews the events of her life, confesses 
her errors and sins, and implores pardon 
of God with that anxious humility which 
is a distinctive feature of Christian virtue. 
I find this passage : a Vanity cleaves to 
me, I fear, O Lord, in all I say, in all I 
do. In all I suffer I am not enduring to 
slights or neglects, am subject to envy the 
good parts of others, even as to worldly 



140 Love in Makriage. 

gifts; failing in my duty to my supe- 
riors ; apt to be soon angry with and 
without cause too often, and by it may 
have grieved those that desired to please 
me, or provoked others to sin by my rash 
anger; not ready to own any advantage 
I may have received by good advice or 
example ; not well satisfied if I have not 
all the respect I expected, even from my 
superiors. Such is the pride of my 
heart," 

I would not judge Lady Russell as 
severely as she judges herself; but in this 
accusation of pride and exaction she touches 
the weak part of her nature, and displays 
as much penetration as sincerity. 

As she grew old, surrounded with so 
much respect, illustrious in her mourning, 
happy in her country and in her family, 
a gradual and beautiful transformation 
w r as produced in her character. The same 



Love in Maeeiage. 141 

remembrances and the same regrets were 
equally present, but they were no longer 
accompanied with the same anguish. 
Time, habit, weariness, and that detach- 
ment from self which age produces in 
superior natures, softened the sharpness 
of her grief without destroying it. Her 
affection for her children, her solicitude 
for their virtue and happiness, held a 
larger place in her heart, and left less 
room for the intense and bitter regrets 
which belonged to her own part. Re- 
ligion, its anxieties, duties, exercises, and 
devotions, constantly occupied her thoughts 
and became her habitual practice. In a 
word, she possessed Christian calmness 
and resignation, and though her love was 
ever consecrated to the same object, she 
was more submissive to God, confiding in 
the eternal future, and more occupied in 
securing it than impatient of obtaining it. 



142 Love in Marriage. 

These sentiments are apparent in a long 
letter which she wrote to her children in 
1691, before the marriage of her second 
daughter and son; it gives them, in the 
utmost freedom, the counsels, examples, 
and exhortations of her faith and tender- 
ness. "My dear children," she says to 
them, "I write this upon the 21st of July, 
a day of sad remembrances to me, it being 
that whereon your excellent father was 
taken from us with much severity, to my 
lasting sorrow and your loss. I have not 
yet omitted on this day (but when pre- 
vented by sickness) to humble and afflict 
myself under the mighty hand of God, 
pouring out my soul before him in prayer 
and fasting. 

"As, first to testify my humiliation for 
all my sins, for my having offended God 
in so many and so frequent breaches of 
my baptismal vow, my sacrament vows, 



Love in Maeeiage. 143 

and all those vows I have at any other 
time made of a better and more strict 
obedience to all his holy commandments. 

" I recollect as well as I can what they 
have been, and make my resolutions to 
do better for the time to come ; and, as a 
help to my memory, I did now look over 
some notes I had by me of some former 
examination ; at other times I have done 
it by considering all the passages of my 
life which I have by me, noted in a paper 
after the same manner* I set yours down, 
and gave it you when you first received 
the sacrament." 

She describes to her children her daily 
practice of rigid self-examination, her 
habitual prayers, and reading both in the 
Holy Scriptures and in works of religious 
instruction and edification. "I take my 
paper and consider what I have been 
most faulty in this week, as wandering in 



144 Love in Marriage. 

prayer, or negligent in reading, or pas- 
sionate, or envious, or what else. I set it 
down (in as few words as I can) at the 
foot of my dayly notes for that week ; and 
so that is an abridgment for the whole 
week. Saturday morning begins the next 
week; and upon the first Friday in every 
month, or the last, just before I use my 
confession, I look upon my notes and con- 
sider the actions of the whole month, if 
nothing but common has happened the less 
examination will suffice ; only I take care 
so to recollect as may represent anything 
that is remarkable or great, either to be 
matter of sorrow or thanksgiving, (for 
other things a general care is proportion- 
able,) and make my resolutions accordingly. 
This gets on a habit of a constant watch- 
fulness ; and at sacrament times, or at any 
other time that I would examine myself, 
I find it a great help to read this. It 



Love in Marriage. 145 

saves much time in looking back, and one's 
thoughts are less distracted, and makes 
our lives more easy to us when we see how 
we live from one sacrament to another. 
And this makes religion easy, and the 
mind quiet and full of tranquillity; and 
though it may seem a hard task at first, 
yet a little use makes it none, though if 
it be — for flesh and blood is apt to draw 
back at the times of devotion, and espe- 
cially at such like exercise — yet if it help 
us to live more innocently, and to state 
things more reverently and usefully be- 
tween God and our souls, no pains is too 
much, but on the contrary, doing this will 
upon trial (I speak it by experience) be 
found less pains to such as mean to be 
serious in religion. 

" My child, believe your mother ; there 
is nothing now in this world can touch 

me very sorely but my children's concerns, 
10 



146 Love ix Marriage. 

(bating religion,) and although I love 
your bodies but too well, yet if my heart 
deceive me not, 'tis as nothing in compari- 
son of your more precious souls. When 
I have the least jealousy that any of you 
have ill inclinations, or not so good as 
I would gladly have them, or fear that 
you tread though never so little out of 
the right path, O how it pierces my soul 
in fear and anguish for yours ! If you 
love or bear any respect for the memory 
of your father, do not endanger a separa- 
tion from him and me in the next life ; 
but infinitely above all other argument 
is this, that we should not be ungrateful 
to that God that made us and preserves 
us ; made us be born into this world that 
we might be capable of a life to all 
eternity, where innocence and happiness 
last forever; to this place of joy and bliss 
this is our passage, and is to some more 



Love in Marriage. 147 

rugged than 'tis to others, for wise ends, 
by Providence hid from us now ; but when 
we shall have put off these tabernacles of 
clay our clarified spirits shall then under- 
stand, and admire, adore, and love the 
wisdom and power and love of God to 
his creatures. How lovely will the beauty 
of providence be to us then ! though now 
that we see but the dark side of the cloud, 
'tis often very black and gloomy to us. 

" And now, my dear child, I have but 
little more to add, except to put you in 
mind to remember this life at longest is 
but short, and how short none can tell ; 
but if you live, crosses will come and 
pleasures wear away. Strive to get gospel 
evidence of your being a child of God, 
and having a title to the promises of eter- 
nal life. 'Tis this, believe me, my dear 
child, 'tis the witness of an honest and 
good life in the day of trouble and dis- 



148 Love in Marriage. 

tress, no refreshment then but in a well- 
founded hope to enjoy a happy eternity, 
and to what a degree, that calms and 
sweetens the most bitter sorrows, is incon- 
ceivable by such as have not felt it, as 
I bless God I have ever since I could get 
over the astonishment of so great and so 
sudden a blow. When I am cast down 
with some sad reflections of what I have 
lost, I do as soon as I can sum my thoughts 
to consider that in a short time I shall 
leave this world and go to a place, where 
I shall see Him who died for me ; I shall 
then know much of the reason of all these 
providences we do now so little under- 
stand and think so severe. I shall meet 
all my pious friends again, and what a joy 
will it be to feel continual springs of 
pleasure, a perpetual and entire quiet in 
our own minds ; no sickness, no bad appe- 
tite, no passion shall remain in us, but a 



Love in Maeeiage. 149 

constant joy in being extremely good; 
and the sense that this will be perpetual 
must add a freshness to that fullness of 
joy which could not be entire if we did 
not foresee it would be endless. O 
blessed, longed-for day ! 

" O my beloved children, take care we 
meet again. Do but experience the pleas- 
ure of a well-spent life, and the pure 
delights of meditating on the future state 
of eternity ; that you may do so, and love 
it, to my last breath you will have the 
prayers of a truly loving mother. Con- 
sider, my dear, that all the innocent de- 
lights of life you may take, and have no 
anxiety of mind with them; but if they 
shut out religious thoughts and perform- 
ances, and devour and take up all our 
time, then indeed we sin, and conscience 
will sting at some time or other, and be 
a sore remembrancer, and check us in our 



150 Love in Marriage. 

gayety; but be devout and regular in 
your duties to God, then heaven will be 
secure, and pleasures innocent." 

I do not believe that a sweeter and 
more solemn exhortation can be found, 
in which tender anxiety is better united 
with fervent piety. Lady Russell needed 
to preserve all her fortitude ; her trials 
were not yet ended. Ten years from the 
day when these fervent words were ad- 
dressed to her children she was by the 
bedside of her son, the Duke of Bedford, 
who had been suddenly seized with small- 
pox. The young duchess and his chil- 
dren had been removed from fear of con- 
tagion; the mother remained alone to 
sustain the courage and receive the last 
words of her expiring child. He died. 
"Alas! my dear Lord Gal way," Lady 
Russell wrote some days after to her 
cousin, Henry de Ruvigny, "my thoughts 



Love in Marriage. 151 

are yet all disorder, confusion, and amaze- 
ment ; and I think I am very incapable 
of saying or doing what I should. I did 
not know the greatness of my love to his 
person till I could see it no more. "When 
nature, who will be mistress, has in 
some measure, with time, relieved herself, 
then, and not till then, I trust the Good- 
ness, which hath no bounds, and whose 
power is irresistible, will assist me by his 
grace to rest contented with w r hat his un- 
erring providence has appointed and per- 
mitted. And I shall feel ease in this 
contemplation, that there was nothing 
uncomfortable in his death but the losing 
him. His God was, I verily believe, ever 
in his thoughts. Toward his last hours 
he called upon him, and complained he 
could not pray his prayers. To what I 
answered, he said he wished for more 
time to make up his accounts with God. 



152 Love in Marriage. 

Then, with remembrance to Lis Bisters, 
and telling me how good and kind his 
wife had been to him, and that he should 
have been glad to have expressed himself 
to her, said something to me of my double 
kindness to his wife, and so died away. 
There seemed no reluctance to leave this 
world, he was patient and easy the whole 
time, and I believe knew his danger, but 
loth to grieve those by him, he delayed 
what he might have said. But why all 
this? The decree is past. I do not ask 
your prayers ; I know you offer them 
w r ith sincerity to our Almighty God for 
your afflicted kinswoman."* 

Six months had scarcely passed when 
another terrible blow struck Lady Rus- 
sell; her second daughter, the Duchess 

* The young Duke of Bedford left several children at 
his death, among others two sons, from whom have 
descended the present Duke of Bedford and his brother 
Lord John Russell. 



Love in Maeriage. 153 

of Rutland, died in childbed. Of her 
three children, her eldest daughter, the 
Duchess of Devonshire, alone remained to 
her, and she was on the eve of her con- 
finement. Resolved to conceal the death 
of her sister, the mother replied to the 
pressing questions of her daughter, "I 
have seen your sister out of her bed to- 
day." She had seen her in her coffin. 

Nearly twenty years before this last 
calamity Lady Russell had been in danger 
of losing her eyesight; the operation for 
cataract, though successfully performed, 
had left her with but a difficult and pre- 
carious use of her eyes. The few letters 
which remain of this sad period of her 
life are deeply sorrowful but calm, as 
from a captive awaiting deliverance after 
seeing all whom she loved go forth from 
their common prison. May 28th, 1716, 
she wrote to Lord Gal way, who had also 



154 Love in Marriage. 

been afflicted in his dearest affections, 
" I also pray to God to fortify your spirit 
under every trial ; till eternity swallows 
all our troubles, all our sorrows, all our 
disappointments, and all our pains in this 
life. The longest, how short to eternity !" 
In September, 1723, Lady Russell' was 
alone in her London residence, South- 
ampton House, where she had lived with 
her father and husband, and during her 
widowhood. On the 26th of the same 
month her grand-daughter, Lady Rachael 
Morgan, wrote from Chatsworth to her 
brother, Sir James Cavendish, "The bad 
account we have received of Grandmamma 
Russell has put us into great disorder and 
hurry. Mamma has left us and gone to 
London." " I believe she has stopped the 
letters on the road, for none have come 
here to-day, so that we are still in sus- 
pense. I should be very glad that mamma 



Love m Marriage. 155 

should get to town time enough to see 
her, because it might be some satisfaction 
to both, and I hear grandmamma asked 
for her." 

God granted this last satisfaction to 
the mother and daughter. Lady Russell 
expired the 29th of September, 1723. The 
British Gazetteer announced her death 
on the 5th of October, as follows: "The 
Right Honorable the Lady Russell, relict 
of Lord Russell, died on Sunday morning 
last, at five o'clock, at Southampton House, 
aged eighty-six, and her corpse is to be 
carried to Chenies, in Buckinghamshire, 
to be interred with that of her lord." 
The last words of Lord Russell to Burnet 
were at last fulfilled for his wife, as well 
as for himself; she had done with time, 
she had entered into eternity. 

I have taken a profound interest in 
sketching this character, so pure in affec- 



156 Love in Marriage. 

tion, so constant in grief, always great 
and always humble in her greatness, faith- 
ful and devoted with the same ardor to 
her sentiments and duties, in joy and in 
sadness, in triumph and in adversity. Our 
own times are tainted with a deplorable 
evil ; it is the belief that passion must be 
without restraint. Intense love, perfect 
devotion, and all the fervent, exalted 
emotions which master the soul, can exist 
only, according to this depraved creed, 
when freed from moral laws and social 
conventionalities. In its eyes all rule is 
a yoke which paralyzes; all submission, 
degrading servitude ; and all warmth is 
extinguished unless it flames into a con- 
suming fire. Unfortunately a graver evil 
still is, that all this does not arise from 
paroxysms of feverish temperament and 
the power of exuberant force; it has its 
source in perverse doctrines, in the re- 



Love in Marriage. 157 

jection of all law, of all faith, of all super- 
human existence, in the idolatry of man, 
putting himself in the place of God, him- 
self alone his only pleasure and his only 
will. To this evil is added another not 
less deplorable. Man not only worships 
himself alone, but he worships himself 
only in masses, in which everything is 
confounded. He both hates and envies 
all above the common level. All supe- 
riority, all individual greatness, of what- 
ever kind or name, appears to these insane 
and weak minds a crime and oppression 
toward that chaos of indistinct and ephem- 
eral being which they call humanity. 
They are triumphant when any odious 
example of vice or crime is detected in 
the upper ranks of society. They boldly 
employ these lamentable revelations of 
the more elevated circles as an argument 
against all social distinctions. They wish to 



158 Love in Marriage. 

have it believed that these are the general 
manners, the natural consequences of high 
birth or condition, regardless of the title 
or foundation upon which it is raised. 
When one has been assailed with these 
base doctrines, and the shameful passions 
to which they give birth, and has felt 
the disgust, and in some measure the peril 
which spring from them, it is a profound 
pleasure to find some of those noble 
natures which give a decisive denial to 
such assumptions. I respect collective 
humanity as much as I admire and love 
its glorified image of what is noble and 
pure, personified and elevated with visi- 
ble features, and bearing a proper name. 
Lady Kussell affords the soul this beauti- 
ful and genuine joy. She is a great Chris- 
tian lady. She is a stranger to me no 
longer; her sentiments touch me, her fate 
absorbs me as if she were living before 



Love in Marriage. 159 

my eyes; I believe when she departed 
from this life, filled as it was with such 
bitter trials to her, she entered into that 
world, which is vailed from our eyes 
until God shall call us to it, to receive 
with her beloved husband the recompense 
of her virtues and her griefs. 



THE END. 



